Backbone.js cascading collections and sync? - rest

Question

I'm trying to use as much of the OOTB sync and RESTful functionality in Backbone. I have a Web API set up for basic CRUD for my models. I have:
var SearchModel = Backbone.Model.extend({});
var SearchMappingModel = Backbone.Model.extend({});
var SearchComponentModel = Backbone.Model.extend({});
var SearchCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({});
var SearchMappingCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({});
var SearchComponentCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({});
For every Search there is 1-to-many SearchMappings, and for every SearchMapping, there are 1-to-many SearchComponents. My URLs for sync would be something like, "/search" for the Search collection, "'/searchmapping/' + searchId" for the SearchMapping collection, and "'/searchcomponent/' + mappingId" for the SearchComponent collection.
My question is, since each collection is dependent on the previous one, is there a way I can make a cascading relationship in backbone to minimize my code and use as much of the basic sync functionality that's already there?
My initial thought is to create a collection within a collection and write my own .fetch() to first fetch the parent collection and on its success then fetch the child, which will then also get its child after its own success, like this:
var SearchCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
model: SearchModel,
initialize: function (data) {
this.url = baseURL + "/search";
this.data = data;
this.SearchMappingCollection = new SearchMappingCollection();
},
fetchData: function () {
this.fetch({
success: _.bind(function (results) {
this.fetchListSuccess(results);
}, this)
});
},
fetchListSuccess: function (results) {
this.SearchMappingCollection.fetchData(results);
}
The same would be done on a .save(). This may be a good way of doing it, but wanted to get feedback from anyone else that's done something similar.

Answer 1

I ended up not using a cascading format. It seems that it was adding more complexity and giving nothing in return. All 3 collections now sit on the controller level, and I just load the next collection after each collection is loaded on each "reset" event.