With the excitement around the web for Backbone, Ember etc I’m really interested in learning to use one (or some) of them, but I cannot work out how, as a front-end developer, I would start building a site with them & integrating them into my workflow. I have a few questions that, if answered, would really clear some things up for me.
Can the data for site be purely populated with a collection of JSON files or is it best for a database or server side setup to provide the data?
Are these frameworks suited to apps where users need to manipulate or interact with the data? Could they be used for a brochure site for example? i.e. not much functionality or interactivy…
I think the overarching questions here are: What are these MVC’s (MV*’s etc etc) good at doing? and what should they not be used for?
I think I have a clear idea on some of these questions but I would really appreciate some clarification from someone who has a deeper knowledge of the subject.
P.S. If there are any useful links, articles, Github repos, screencasts I would really appreciate that too.
Many thanks
You can use static JSON files if you want. They can be convenient if you want to quickly prototype an application where you don’t necessarily have the backend code available for generating the data you need.
Client-side MVC libraries are best for highly interactive applications. Using Ajax and other related techniques will allow you to build an application which feels more responsive to the user, as you will be able to display loaders and the interactions can function faster when you don’t need to load the whole page every time.
You can use these kinds of libraries for other types of sites as well, but if it’s a site with mostly just browsable information you will not gain as big a benefit, as traditional page load based approaches work just as well.