Question

I have a single page backbone application. It’s essentially a list of items with some data associated with each. Right now, it’s only visible to admin user and the edit, destroy links are present as well as a bunch of other “admin-only” features.’

If I want to make the page available to non-admin users and let them only see the items and maybe some admin features, would it be preferable to have a different sets of views, models, templates, another app of just hide depending on the user role?

Or maybe just another set of templates?

Answer 1

Another simple approach could be to use the same template (same html) but toggling elements through CSS.

You can add/remove a class to the root DOM element of your template like .admin and play with CSS:

#my-root-element .admin-element {
  display: none;
}

#my-root-element.admin .admin-element {
  display: block;
} 

Of course the elements will be still there for possible malicious users, but this shouldn’t be a security issue because you always should have extra security filters in the server layer.