Develop Reference

Where exactly the Virtual DOM is stored?

I'm torturing myself for hours now and can't find an answer.
Where exactly, under what object/key, the React data are located? I found an object ReactRoot that seems to store all the information about components, but I have no idea where it sits in the window (I guess?) object.
It has to be somewhere under the window object, right?
If you take a memory snapshot and select the ReactRoot constructor from the list, chrome will create a reference to it under $0 ($0 in chrome).
EDIT
Is it possible that ReactRoot is declared in a way that makes it inaccessible for other objects? How is this possible in js? React isn't getting any special treatment from the browsers, is he?

There is a document explaining the DOM Level 1 fundamental methods.
See also the DOM Level 1 Core specification from the W3C.
When you create an element, a new instance of the element were created but not rendered. Not until you include them into the DOM tree.
Browser will only render elements within the document body. But everything else is just an instance of an object, the virtual DOM.
// create a new Text node for the second paragraph
var newText = document.createTextNode("This is the second paragraph.");
// create a new Element to be the second paragraph
var newElement = document.createElement("P");

Struggling to bind and match DOM elements with vanilla JS

I prefer to bind all my DOM elements at the top of my code so that the ID or class reference is only hard coded once, even though the element is used multiple times within the code. Something like this:
var startButton = "#startButton";
var closeButtons = ".button.close";
That works well with selectors, such as document.querySelector. The challenge occurs when I'm about to compare an element ID to one of the static variables above, like for instance during a click event:
e.target.id == startButton
Since the variable startButton contains a sharp, I would have to do something like this:
e.target.id == startButton.replace('#', '')
This is obviously not the ideal way of handling things, so I'm wondering if there's a better way to bind DOM elements for later use?
Please note that I did consider retrieving the elements using a selector right away, like document.querySelector, but that prevents me from manipulating the elements later on.
EDIT: My note above turns out to be wrong. It's totally possible to manipulate the elements later on. So the question is whether it's better to store selectors in variables, or to store nodes in variables. As pointed out below, the DOM element might not exist while it's being declared, so it might be better to store the selector in a variable, like I'm doing above.

For the specific example in your question, you can use .matches():
if (e.target.matches(startButton))
The .matches() DOM API takes a selector as its argument.

Override Marionette.Region's getEl method in Backbone.Marionette

I've set up a project where I've extended a Backbone.Marionette.Layout that contains two different regions. This layout can be used as a component throughout the application. In particular, the regions are set up like the following.
regions : {
masterRegion : { selector: '[data-region=master]' },
slaveRegion: { selector: '[data-region=slave]' }
},
In particular, I'm using a data-region selector to inject the view I'm interested in.
When such a layout is used in a tree structure views are duplicated since getEl function adresses the wrong region to inject the view. Obviously it's my fault and within Marionette (v1.1.0) doc the following is written.
override the getEl function if we have a parentEl this must be
overridden to ensure the selector is found on the first use of the
region. if we try to assign the region's el to parentEl.find(selector)
in the object literal to build the region, the element will not be
guaranteed to be in the DOM already, and will cause problems
where getEl is defined as
getEl: function(selector){
return Marionette.$(selector);
}
So, my question is the following. What does this mean? How can I override this method? Where is the correct to perform such an override?
Hope it's clear.

Here's my understanding of this:
the points below apply to the case where the layout is contained within another element ("if we have a parentEl")
the first time you use a region, Marionette needs to select the proper DOM element to populate, according to the selector string ("ensure the selector is found on the first use of the region")
you can't simply look for the selector in the parentEl ("if we try to assign the region's el to parentEl.find(selector) in the object literal"), because the DOM element we want isn't necessarily in the DOM yet ("the element will not be guaranteed to be in the DOM already")
In other words, the first time you use a region (e.g. with a call to the show method), Marionette needs to build a region instance and associate it with the correct DOM element (specified by the selectorattribute).
However, before Marionette can look for the DOM element within the containing parent element, it must ensure that all required DOM elements (most importantly the one we're looking for) have loaded.
Does that make more sense to you?
Edit based on flexaddicted's comment.
Could you suggest me a the correct way to achieve this? Is there any
manner to override the method below?
I don't think you need to override this method. The comment indicates why the DOM element is fetched that way instead of by direct assignment when the region is built, but it should still work properly with a tree structure (since parents can still be determined properly).
I think the problem might be with your region selector: as it is "generic", it can potentially match multiple elements (as opposed to selecting with an id attribute that should match only 1 element), and could be matching a DOM element you're not expecting such as a child view. (This of course depends on when Marionette looks at the DOM to fetch the selector.)
Also, I'd consider using a composite view for your tree structure needs if possible. See http://davidsulc.com/blog/2013/02/03/tutorial-nested-views-using-backbone-marionettes-compositeview/ and http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2012/04/05/composite-views-tree-structures-tables-and-more/

Why should y.innerHTML = x.innerHTML; be avoided?

Let's say that we have a DIV x on the page and we want to duplicate ("copy-paste") the contents of that DIV into another DIV y. We could do this like so:
y.innerHTML = x.innerHTML;
or with jQuery:
$(y).html( $(x).html() );
However, it appears that this method is not a good idea, and that it should be avoided.
(1) Why should this method be avoided?
(2) How should this be done instead?
Update:
For the sake of this question let's assume that there are no elements with ID's inside the DIV x.
(Sorry I forgot to cover this case in my original question.)
Conclusion:
I have posted my own answer to this question below (as I originally intended). Now, I also planed to accept my own answer :P, but lonesomeday's answer is so amazing that I have to accept it instead.

This method of "copying" HTML elements from one place to another is the result of a misapprehension of what a browser does. Browsers don't keep an HTML document in memory somewhere and repeatedly modify the HTML based on commands from JavaScript.
When a browser first loads a page, it parses the HTML document and turns it into a DOM structure. This is a relationship of objects following a W3C standard (well, mostly...). The original HTML is from then on completely redundant. The browser doesn't care what the original HTML structure was; its understanding of the web page is the DOM structure that was created from it. If your HTML markup was incorrect/invalid, it will be corrected in some way by the web browser; the DOM structure will not contain the invalid code in any way.
Basically, HTML should be treated as a way of serialising a DOM structure to be passed over the internet or stored in a file locally.
It should not, therefore, be used for modifying an existing web page. The DOM (Document Object Model) has a system for changing the content of a page. This is based on the relationship of nodes, not on the HTML serialisation. So when you add an li to a ul, you have these two options (assuming ul is the list element):
// option 1: innerHTML
ul.innerHTML += '<li>foobar</li>';
// option 2: DOM manipulation
var li = document.createElement('li');
li.appendChild(document.createTextNode('foobar'));
ul.appendChild(li);
Now, the first option looks a lot simpler, but this is only because the browser has abstracted a lot away for you: internally, the browser has to convert the element's children to a string, then append some content, then convert the string back to a DOM structure. The second option corresponds to the browser's native understanding of what's going on.
The second major consideration is to think about the limitations of HTML. When you think about a webpage, not everything relevant to the element can be serialised to HTML. For instance, event handlers bound with x.onclick = function(); or x.addEventListener(...) won't be replicated in innerHTML, so they won't be copied across. So the new elements in y won't have the event listeners. This probably isn't what you want.
So the way around this is to work with the native DOM methods:
for (var i = 0; i < x.childNodes.length; i++) {
y.appendChild(x.childNodes[i].cloneNode(true));
}
Reading the MDN documentation will probably help to understand this way of doing things:
appendChild
cloneNode
childNodes
Now the problem with this (as with option 2 in the code example above) is that it is very verbose, far longer than the innerHTML option would be. This is when you appreciate having a JavaScript library that does this kind of thing for you. For example, in jQuery:
$('#y').html($('#x').clone(true, true).contents());
This is a lot more explicit about what you want to happen. As well as having various performance benefits and preserving event handlers, for example, it also helps you to understand what your code is doing. This is good for your soul as a JavaScript programmer and makes bizarre errors significantly less likely!

You can duplicate IDs which need to be unique.
jQuery's clone method call like, $(element).clone(true); will clone data and event listeners, but ID's will still also be cloned. So to avoid duplicate IDs, don't use IDs for items that need to be cloned.

It should be avoided because then you lose any handlers that may have been on that
DOM element.
You can try to get around that by appending clones of the DOM elements instead of completely overwriting them.

First, let's define the task that has to be accomplished here:
All child nodes of DIV x have to be "copied" (together with all its descendants = deep copy) and "pasted" into the DIV y. If any of the descendants of x has one or more event handlers bound to it, we would presumably want those handlers to continue working on the copies (once they have been placed inside y).
Now, this is not a trivial task. Luckily, the jQuery library (and all the other popular libraries as well I assume) offers a convenient method to accomplish this task: .clone(). Using this method, the solution could be written like so:
$( x ).contents().clone( true ).appendTo( y );
The above solution is the answer to question (2). Now, let's tackle question (1):
This
y.innerHTML = x.innerHTML;
is not just a bad idea - it's an awful one. Let me explain...
The above statement can be broken down into two steps.
The expression x.innerHTML is evaluated,
That return value of that expression (which is a string) is assigned to y.innerHTML.
The nodes that we want to copy (the child nodes of x) are DOM nodes. They are objects that exist in the browser's memory. When evaluating x.innerHTML, the browser serializes (stringifies) those DOM nodes into a string (HTML source code string).
Now, if we needed such a string (to store it in a database, for instance), then this serialization would be understandable. However, we do not need such a string (at least not as an end-product).
In step 2, we are assigning this string to y.innerHTML. The browser evaluates this by parsing the string which results in a set of DOM nodes which are then inserted into DIV y (as child nodes).
So, to sum up:
Child nodes of x --> stringifying --> HTML source code string --> parsing --> Nodes (copies)
So, what's the problem with this approach? Well, DOM nodes may contain properties and functionality which cannot and therefore won't be serialized. The most important such functionality are event handlers that are bound to descendants of x - the copies of those elements won't have any event handlers bound to them. The handlers got lost in the process.
An interesting analogy can be made here:
Digital signal --> D/A conversion --> Analog signal --> A/D conversion --> Digital signal
As you probably know, the resulting digital signal is not an exact copy of the original digital signal - some information got lost in the process.
I hope you understand now why y.innerHTML = x.innerHTML should be avoided.

I wouldn't do it simply because you're asking the browser to re-parse HTML markup that has already been parsed.
I'd be more inclined to use the native cloneNode(true) to duplicate the existing DOM elements.
var node, i=0;
while( node = x.childNodes[ i++ ] ) {
y.appendChild( node.cloneNode( true ) );
}

Well it really depends. There is a possibility of creating duplicate elements with the same ID, which is never a good thing.
jQuery also has methods that can do this for you.

How a variable binds its value to the DOM?

This might be crazy but it intriguing me for quite some time :)
I would like to know how a javascript variable can bind itself do the DOM after it is appended to the body, for example?
var p = document.createElement('p');
p.innerHTML = 'Hello World';
document.body.appendChild(p);
So now I have this p variable which contains an exact reference of that specific paragraph no matter where it is located inside the body.
p.innerHTML = 'new content';
will easily find the paragraph and change its value
So my question is...how this binding is made?
what If I want to re-create that after the variable is gone?
is there any way to attach that again without having to run through the DOM and find it?
I was thinking if somehow each node inside the DOM have its specific identifier that is not the id attribute but some kind of UUID that can be referred later on?
like:
console.log(p.localName); //aoi12e2kj2322444r4t
p = null;
so I can still recover that paragraph node thought this uuid?
In this environment I wouldn't have access to any external node attribute, such name, id, data, etc..
So I am quite curious to know how this binding is created between variable and DOM node?

I believe that it changes depending on the browser your using. There's no standard way to do so. Currently you either use the id or iterate over the dom until you reach the element you want.

The binding is created on the first line, where you assign the result of document.createElement to p. This is no different from any other time you assign something to a variable, which always binds the variable name to the value. As far as the script is concerned, there is no other binding occurring. The p is an HTMLElement, and that's all of the element that's exposed.
Note that for p.innerHTML = 'new content';, the element doesn't have to be found because p already refers to the element. That's what the DOM does: it exposes documents and document elements.
If you later want another reference to the same element, you'll have to use DOM methods (such as getElementById) to find it. That's what they're there for.
As for how the DOM exposes elements, that's implemented internally and varies from browser to browser or library to library (since the DOM isn't used just in browsers).