Parsing Dates in Backbone Models

The parse() method on Backbone.Model is useful for parsing out using model properties. These are typically things like dates — the API doesn't return a JavaScript Date instance — it's either a number or a string representation of a date. That said, it's not terribly useful to store these strings or numbers in date properties of models. For example, using parse(), you can add a level of certainty in your application that the date fields on your models will always be Date instances, and not numbers or strings.