Are there any client-side JavaScript MVC (micro-)frameworks?
I have a rather complicated HTML form, and it would benefit from the MVC pattern.
I imagine a good solution would provide the following:
Ajax, comet, JSONP and all that jazz are serious overkill.
Backbone is a great light-weight framework. Give it a try: http://backbonejs.org/
JavaScriptMVC is an excellent solution. It's everything is a plugin approach enables you to select only the features you need. As of 2.0, it's based on jQuery.
On progressively enhancing your website, that's left up to the user as JMVC provides just a middle layer for development - it's up to you to make that design choice yourself.
However, JavaScriptMVC is simply the best general purpose JavaScriptMVC library because of its powerful event delegation based controllers.
Event delegation lets you escape having to attach event handlers, and simply create rules for your page.
Finally, JMVC is much more than a MVC architecture. It has all parts of the development cycle covered with:
Spine has an API similar to Backbone but it's a lot smaller. It features prototypal inheritance.
AngularJS works well together with jQuery and will help you a lot with MVC structure and strict separation of concerns.
Full testing environment and Dependency Injection included...
Check it out at http://angularjs.org
Indeed there is: http://www.javascriptmvc.com/
I think you will find this sufficient!
I think this one looks like something you should check out: http://knockoutjs.com/
(As a silverlight / wpf programmer this was the library that made me finally start learning javascript. It is based on the Model-View-View-Model (MVVM) pattern, as for me right now seems like a good choise!)
These are the three features that make Ember a joy to use:
Use bindings to keep properties between two different objects in sync. You just declare a binding once, and Ember will make sure changes get propagated in either direction.
Here's how you create a binding between two objects:
MyApp.president = Ember.Object.create({
name: "Barack Obama"
});
MyApp.country = Ember.Object.create({
// Ending a property with 'Binding' tells Ember to
// create a binding to the presidentName property.
presidentNameBinding: 'MyApp.president.name'
});
MyApp.country.get('presidentName');
// "Barack Obama"
Bindings allow you to architect your application using the MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern, then rest easy knowing that data will always flow correctly from layer to layer.
Computed properties allow you to treat a function like a property. Computed properties are useful because they can work with bindings, just like any other property.
Ember uses Handlebars, a semantic templating library. To take data from your JavaScript application and put it into the DOM, create a tag and put it into your HTML, wherever you'd like the value to appear:
<script type="text/x-handlebars">
The President of the United States is {{MyApp.president.fullName}}.
</script>
Full disclosure: i'm the author of this library :)
If you're looking for something really tiny (1.5kb minified / gzipped) have a look, and tell me if you like it.
new operator). What seems unnecessary is yet another each and map. I already have them in Underscore.js and jQuery.If your requirements are really simple, you could write your own simple MVC like Alex Netkachov did.
His examples are built on dojo (Note: they don't work for me on his page because of a missing dojo.js file), but you could follow the pattern in plain Javascript.
It's probably overkill for what you need, but SproutCore is an MVC framework, and it doesn't look any more heavyweight than JavaScriptMVC or TrimPath's Junction.
Unfortunately, none of these seem to be built on the principle of progressive enhancement.
UPDATE 2016: Sammy.js seems to be abandoned.
Text from the site:
A small webframework with class.
Please also checkout jquery-claypool.
jquery-claypool is a small, fast, railable mvc framework built on jquery, based on my experience with django, rails, spring etc. Its very light weight and runs on both on the client and in server environments.
it provides a routing framework for clean mvc, category logging, filters (aop), lazy creation of controllers, inversion of control, convention-over-configuration and not much more by design.
it doesn't do anything jquery already does, feels like jquery, and works like a good framework should: simply.
Hope you check it out.
Jamal is the lightweightest I've seen. It's also based on jQuery (bonus). Have not used.
If you want to keep things under control and quite simple, you may don't need a framework, but just implement your own mvc pattern. Just check this article: Model-View-Controller (MVC) with JavaScript by Alex Netkachov on 2006.
Here is a list of all open-source JavaScript Frameworks known to mankind.
http://getopensource.info/explore/javascript/framework/
Or only MVC frameworks
http://getopensource.info/explore/javascript/mvc/
Disclosure: I'm the developer of this website.
I wouldn't call this a micro-framework, but it sure looks interesting: Cappuccino Web Framework
I have developed a very simple Javascript MVC framework called MCV. It does not do exactly what you ask for, but it is easily extensible with helpers. Anyway, it is definitely micro (1,9kb packed).
It works more or less like Jamal, but I decided to roll my own for two reasons:
I upvoted the AngularJS (full disclosure, I'm involved in a limited way with the angular dev effort) and am very excited about it. I did a side-by-side comparison taking one feature for an internal project (sorry don't have signoff to share it) and implementing it in both AngularJS and Backbone. It was a great exercise and in the end, I'm very much leaning towards Angular. The core developers are great about answering questions and they've done a really nice job with builtin databinding, unit/e2e testing and documentation. Its still in beta with 1.0 coming out in near future. The beta is very stable.
There is a bit of a paradigm shift, and they use a fairly different approach than most. Integrating your favorite jquery plugins takes a bit of effort but is doable and has been done (angular-contrib on github).
I will say (and this is a problem for most js-centric frameworks), make sure to investigate how to make your content SEO-friendly (if its important to you). Since joining the angular community in June, I've noticed the interest is growing and a number of people are making posts saying that they've looked at Backbone and others but really like what they are seeing in Angular.
There was a key-value binding JavaScript framework called "Coherent", which was inspired by Apple's Cocoa Bindings. The framework has been bought by Apple, but there is still an old copy at http://github.com/trek/coherentjs/tree/master.
Can.js has everything you need and weighs in at just 8 KB. It's taken the best bits from JavaScriptMVC and distilled it into one small, yet kickass framework with observers, widgets, binding, the works. It is compatible with major frameworks (jQuery, Dojo Toolkit, MooTools, etc.). Documentation is excellent and authors are responsive. It is definitely worth a look.
