I took Matt McCrays excellent Coffeescript glue for Backbone.js and moved my saveChanges function into it.

The function serializes all the form elements in the rendered elements and updates the associated model. You can use this code by binding to ‘submit form’ using @handleEvents and calling saveChanges and suppressing the default form submission.

class View
  constructor: ->
    Backbone.View.apply(this, arguments)

  saveChanges: ->
    properties = {}

    for input in @el.find('input,textarea')
      value = $(input).val()
      properties[input.name] = value

    @model.set properties
    @model.save()

    app.saving()

_.extend(View::, Backbone.View.prototype)

A small example from Weheartplaces…

class TripInspector extends App.View
  constructor: ->
    super
    @template= JST["trip_inspector/show"] 
    @render() if @model?

  render: ->
    @el.html(@template { trip : @model })

    @handleEvents {
      'submit form' : 'submit'
    }

  submit: (e) =>
    e.preventDefault()
    @saveChanges()

this.TripInspector = TripInspector