From:http://readystate4.com/2011/10/22/common-backbone-errors-and-what-they-mean/
by:ReadyState4
I’m a big fan of Backbone, the open-source JavaScript MVC framework. It’s lightweight, extendable, has an awesome event model that allows one to bind to changes from just about anything – it’s error messages, however, can be quite cryptic. Simply referencing a missing template file can lead to half an hour of wasted time tracking down the issue. Without further ado here’s a quick list of the day-to-day errors I occasionally encounter and what the problem ended up being:
You probably created an event listener in view that binded to a function that doesn’t exist.
You probably passed a string instead of an object to a Model.set. This frequently happens to me during an ajax callback using jQuery – for some reason Webkit browser return and object while Firefox returns a string.
You’re calling an underscore template put not passing in the data it uses in the template. You’re referencing an underscore template that doesn’t exist. You could have created a new template but forgot to change it’s id.
You probably set a _bind or _bindAll in your view initiailize code and that method doesn’t exist in this view. Double check for a typo.
In your view you could be binding an event to a callback that got overwritten during initialization. Commen when your model is called “contact” and your model is called the same and gets passed in.
Something went wrong in the routing. You may have not instantiated a new view.
Your probably extending an object that extended a backbone object, but the reference to the object is wrong or missing.
Your template logic might have an error in it. Check that you closed open parens and such.
If you’ve experienced a Backbone error that’s not on the list, feel free to post it in the comments.