I’ve started looking at MVC frameworks for javascript recently. For anyone else attempting this I would recommend the excellent TodoMVC site which contains the same simple application (a TODO list) coded using many different MVC frameworks. If you’ve got enough time on your hands, I can see it would be a great idea to look in detail through all the implementations and pick the one that has the best combination of good technical features, flexibility and ongoing development.But I didn’t have that much time so I had to pick one
.I chose Backbone because it has:
- Many live sites.
- Regular releases.
- Fairly lightweight approach (describes itself as “a library not a framework”): can be used in a variety of ways rather than prescribing just one way that you should use it. This is particularly important to me given that there is no consensus yet on how to “do” MVC in javascript, so I want a framework that is flexible enough if I change my mind half way though my project.
- Open architecture: you are positively encouraged to make changes to the library if you don’t like the way part of it works. Obviously javascript’s dynamic nature makes it a lot easier to do this than I’m used to, being a .NET statically typed man by training.
