backbone.js and express: trouble searching a mongodb collection by field with a query string - node.js

Question

I am new to backbone, express, and mongodb.
I am trying to pass a query string to search a mongodb collection by field.
I am doing something wrong. If I comment out the "fetch" from my router, the page is found.
If I try to fetch, then I get a page not found error.
I've tried to isolate where it's breaking, but the backbone architecture is still confusing to me. Thanks in advance. (I'm betting it's a syntax issue in my mongodb call)
kristin
Here is my code.
this URL should return a collection where "type" = 3.
localhost:8888/#content/3
model/models.js:
window.Content = Backbone.Model.extend({
urlRoot: "/content",
idAttribute: "_id"
});
window.ContentCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
model: Content,
url: "/content"
});
views/content.js
window.ContentListView = Backbone.View.extend({
initialize: function () {
this.render();
},
render: function () {
//return this;
this.$el.append('<ul class="thumbnails">');
this.collection.each(function(model) {
this.$('.thumbnails').append(new ContentView({model: model}).render().el);
}, this);
return this;
} });
window.ContentView = Backbone.View.extend({
tagName: "li",
initialize: function () {
this.model.bind("change", this.render, this);
this.model.bind("destroy", this.close, this);
},
render: function () {
$(this.el).html(this.template(this.model.toJSON()));
return this;
}
});
views/main.js
var AppRouter = Backbone.Router.extend({
routes: { "content/:type" : "contentType" },
contentType: function(type) {
var contentList = new ContentCollection({type : type});
contentList.fetch({success: function(){
$("#content").empty().append(new ContentListView({collection: contentList}).el);
}});
this.headerView.selectMenuItem('build-menu');
},
utils.loadTemplate([
'ContentView'
], function() {
app = new AppRouter();
Backbone.history.start(); });
contentView.html
name (<% tag won't print here)
routes/modules.js
exports.findContentByType = function(req, res) {
var type = req.params.type;
db.collection('content', function(err, collection) {
collection.find({'type': type.toString()}).toArray(function(err, items) {
res.send(items);
});
});
};
server.js
app.get('/content/:type', module.findContentByType);

Answer 1

I can see a couple of problems here:
this.headerView.selectMenuItem('build-menu'); (in the router) implies you've defined headerView in the router object, but it's not defined.
Similarly, this.template inside ContentView is not defined
When I remove the line in #1, and and define a dummy template in ContentView:
template: _.template("<div> Test: <%= version %> </div>"),
Then the view at least renders -- see here. (This is with dummy data -- I can't confirm that your server is returning valid/expected JSON.)