Question

Looking to start using Knockout with ASP.NET MVC4. Have watch some examples and encountered the following questions.

1. Today I write my view models backend, I can totally replace it
   with knockout view models on the client side?

2. Is there anything like DataAnnotations in Knockout for
   validation?

Answer 1

1. Yes, you remove the server view and view models. All are now are now on the client.

2. See Knockout validation

Also, you may want to check out OData/WCF data services (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astoriateam/). It basically gives you a Model and Controller. With this approach you server ends up only serving static HTML pages and Model data as AJAX calls. And it also supports “paging” of data.

IMHO, this the way of the future.

Other links of interest:

• Authorisation – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd728284.aspx
• Routing – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rjacobs/archive/2010/04/05/using-system-web-routing-with-data-services-odata.aspx or http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WCF-Data-Service-with-285746ac