Personally I would create more filtering methods on the collection, because it has the additional benefit of encapsulating logic inside the collection.
You could also try to reuse the existing collection. I was toying around with the idea, and arrived at something like this:
var Collection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
//Takes in n arrays. The first item of each array is the method you want
//to call and the rest are the arguments to that method.
//Sets the collection.models property to the value of each successive filter
//and returns the result of the last. Revers the collection.models to its original value.
chainFilters: function(/*args..*/) {
var models = this.models;
try {
filters = _.toArray(arguments);
_.each(filters, function(filter) {
this.models = filter[0].apply(this, _.rest(filter));
}, this);
} catch(err) {
this.models = models;
throw err;
}
var filtered = this.models;
this.models = models;
return filtered;
}
});
Usage:
var results = collection.chainFilters(
[ collection.filter, function(model) { return model.get('name') === 'foo'; } ],
[ collection.someMethod, 'someargument' ],
[ collection.someOtherMethod ]
);
Here's a working sample. It's a bit peculiar, I know.