Javascript MVC frameworks with MVC server frameworks

2012-01-21 Websites backbone.js · Javascript · MVC

Really interesting article about Javascript MVC frameworks at CodeBrief.

Personally and for work I am totally into backbone.js. It is changing the way that I work with Javascript in my web applications for the better by bringing greater structure and organisation to my code and having a common methodology in the way that I approach server-browser communications.

The only problem that I have is that having a MVC stack in the browser is fine, but then we have the same on the server side with Rails (ok not exactly MVC), Django, Node.js or what have you. We end up with MVCMVC or rather MCVCMV, and this is of course a pattern that causes code duplication if we are not careful.

I might look into creating backbone.js models from Django at some point, but I am not sure that this is the correct route. Obviously the way that GWT and PyJamas work becomes more compelling. Well for me GWT is not that compelling as I don’t really want to have to work on frontend in Java, I don’t think there is the control that one needs over the presentation and I can’t stand Eclipse/NetBeans/xxxx IDE’s as they are slow and cumbersome.

Regarding the Codebrief article ember.js came out on top, and I can see the negatives of backbone.js in its somewhat boilerplate approach though I think this can be minimised somewhat.

Personally I think my goals going forward for Javascript is:

Find a decent testing enviroment that I am happy with
Loading of modules should be optional, and I need to work to convert my existing application to load intelligently our backbone.js models and views
Greater reuse or automatic generation of code

I am intending to write about all of this on this blog in the near future as I come up with more conclusions.