I use jQuery a lot but Backbone is like Greek to me and so is every tutorial I've seen. I just don't get it and I fail to see the benefits.
Can someone point me toward a good and simple explanation/tutorial?
Can someone point me toward a good and simple explanation/tutorial?
Backbone is an object-oriented library that can increase maintainability for so-called single-page applications. E.g. it's often used in an architecture which pairs a dynamic web service with static HTML templates, CSS, and JS (no dynamic server-side HTML generation). In this way it is similar to ExtJS/YUI, but generalizes those widget-centric frameworks.
It's not for tightly-scoped JS enhancements.
In terms of patterns, it adheres mainly to the Model-View-Presenter pattern (embodied in the Model class, the HTML template, and the View class respectively). Switching between logical pages in the single-page app is supported by the Router class (which implement the front controller pattern). Data persistence/retrieval is oriented toward RESTful web services (this is customizable) and therefore pairs will with ActiveRecord-based server frameworks like Rails. The separation of concerns it encourages increases testability, and also allows it to pair well with asynchronous module loaders (e.g. RequireJS).
I did have one question regarding redundancy - if I take advantage of something like validation with Backbone, I still need to do the same validation on the server-side for any data that I POST or PUT back to the server since I can't trust what comes from the client. Is the only gain from doing the client-side validation in Backbone the faster feedback to the user without requiring a round-trip to the server?
I'm currently trying to decide between Backbone.js, Angular.js, Ember.js or sticking closer to what I know with a jquery pjax solution.