When Do You Need A JavaScript MV* Framework?

http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/27/journey-through-the-javascript-mvc-jungle/

When Do You Need A JavaScript MV* Framework?

When building a single-page application using JavaScript, whether it involves a complex user interface or is simply trying to reduce the number of HTTP requests required for new Views, you will likely find yourself inventing many of the pieces that make up an MV* framework like Backbone or Ember.

At the outset, it isn’t terribly difficult to write an application framework that offerssome opinionated way to avoid spaghetti code, however to say that it is equally as trivial to write something of the standard of Backbone would be a grossly incorrect assumption.

There’s a lot more that goes into structuring an application than tying together a DOM manipulation library, templating and routing. Mature MV* frameworks typically not only include many of the pieces you would find yourself writing, but also include solutions to problems you’ll find yourself running into later on down the road. This is a time-saver that you shouldn’t underestimate the value of.

So, where will you likely need an MV* framework and where won’t you?

If you’re writing an application that will likely only be communicating with an API or back-end data service, where much of the heavy lifting for viewing or manipulating that data will be occurring in the browser, you may find a JavaScript MV* framework useful.

Good examples of applications that fall into this category are GMail and Google Docs. These applications typically download a single payload containing all the scripts, stylesheets and markup users need for common tasks and then perform a lot of additional behavior in the background. It’s trivial to switch between reading an email or document to writing one and you don’t need to ask the application to render the whole page again at all.

If, however, you’re building an application that still relies on the server for most of the heavy-lifting of Views/pages and you’re just using a little JavaScript or jQuery to make things a little more interactive, an MV framework may be overkill. There certainly are complex Web applications where the partial rendering of views can* be coupled with a single-page application effectively, but for everything else, you may find yourself better sticking to a simpler setup.