I’m looking for some sort of framework to act as a middle-layer between the UI and my CouchDB database. My aim is to build a highly data-driven web application. I’m currently using PHP-On-Couch which is great for retrieving data from Couch, but not the best at keeping up with updates. CouchDB is perfect for my needs, but not so sure about the rest of my web app plan…
After a bit of looking around, Backbone.js seems like a great fit, but not really sure if it fits my needs. Although the way it updates data from the backend server to the UI is great. Is it better to stay away from PHP and go to something else?
Just looking for some guidance on what technologies are the best fit.
A “web application wich CouchDB” is usually called a couchapp¹.
If you intend to keep your PHP layer, then I’d suggest simply using jquery.couch.js which is used by Futon. Otherwise, there are a lot of ways to build couchapps with a lot of different frameworks. I’d suggest you to look on the couchapp.org wiki which one fits you the most (there is also a page talking about backbone).
The framework with the most momentum right now seems to be Kanso. It’s also the first couchapp framework where I saw a job offer 🙂
¹: couchapp designs both the concept and a tool used to push couchapps on CouchDB. Also note that couchapps don’t need an intermediate layer like PHP and are simply stored on your database. You should retag your question and add “couchapp” to the tags, by the way.