Lightweight frameworks for client-side MVC in javascript?

Question

I'm building a simple client-side survey tool. Users create and edit short surveys and export them as XML (or something similar) when they're done.

I started off using jquery, but realized that it was going to be a headache to map back and forth between the HTML DOM and the underlying XML. It's easy to edit one or the other, but keeping them in sync is a pain.

Anyway, this seems like a standard MVC problem, with a few extra wrinkles:

I want to do all this work clientside.
Lightweight is definitely better.

Any thoughts? I looked into backbone, but it seems to be build around REST-ful interactions with a server-side model, which doesn't work well for me. JavascriptMVC looked really bulky for something this small.

stefanglase · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-20 21:18:21Z

2

Check out AngularJS which states that it brings to HTML what is required to use HTML for JS driven web applications. You can find a simple example of it's usage in form of a showcase of a very simple todo application on the starting page.

edited Sep 20, 2011 at 21:18

answered Sep 20, 2011 at 21:10

stefanglase

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Rickard · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-20 21:00:33Z

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you should have a look at KnockoutJS, which is a JavaScript MVVM framework, which lends itself very well to what your doing.

You can use jQuery to turn the xml into JavaScript objects and add a little Knockout model magic and your UI will automatically update itself when the model changes.

answered Sep 20, 2011 at 21:00

Rickard

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Guard · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-20 21:25:49Z

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You can use Backbone without server sync by creating your custom storage backend providing in-memory persistence

Look at a sample localStorage backend: http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/docs/backbone-localstorage.html which overrides Backbone's sync method

answered Sep 20, 2011 at 21:25

Guard

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streetlogics · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-20 21:30:25Z

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I know it's not a true "MVC" framework, but you may benefit from checking out the jQuery template plugin - http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/templates/ . You can create a template (in this case could be the XML template) that you can use to build the output from a JSON object. This would allow you to maintain the data in one place and allow the "rendering" to happen automatically from your data object.

answered Sep 20, 2011 at 21:30

streetlogics

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Justin Meyer · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-18 06:54:38Z

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You can use JavaScriptMVC via it's download builder: http://javascriptmvc.com/builder.html. Just check the model, view, controller and you are off! Here's a walkthrough of using just those parts:

http://javascriptmvc.com/docs.html#!mvc

answered Oct 18, 2011 at 6:54

Justin Meyer

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