The Top 10 Javascript MVC Frameworks Reviewed

Logo_JS_2005

Over the last several months I have been in a constant search for the perfect javascript MVC framework. Driven by a dire need for the right level of abstraction and features, I have tried out – some more cursorily than others – every framework I could get my hands on. Here lies a brief synopsis of each framework. Lastly, I share the framework which I ultimately decided on.

Specifically, the following four features are very important to me:

  • UI Bindings – I’m not just talking about templates, I’m talking about a declarative approach to automatically updating the view layer when the underlying model changes. Once you have used a framework (such as Flex) that supports UI bindings, you can never go back.
  • Composed Views – Like all software developers, I enjoy creating modular reusable code. For this reason, when programming UI, I would like to be able to compose views (preferably at the template layer). This should also entail the potential for a rich view component hierarchy. An example of this would be a reusable pagination widget.
  • Web Presentation Layer – We are programming for the web here people, the last thing I want are native-style widgets. There is also no reason for a web framework to create it’s own layout manager. HTML and CSS are already the richest way to do style and layout in existence, and should be used as such. The framework should be centered around this concept.
  • Plays Nicely With Others – Let’s face it, jQuery is pretty amazing. I don’t want a framework which comes bundled with a sub-par jQuery clone, I want a framework which recommends using jQuery itself.

The Contenders

Here is a table showing all of the frameworks support for the above features. Click through the title for more detail.

Framework UI Bindings Composed Views Web Presentation Layer Plays Nicely With Others
Backbone.js
SproutCore 1.x
Sammy.js
Spine.js
Cappuccino
Knockout.js
Javascript MVC
Google Web Toolkit
Google Closure
Ember.js
Angular.js
Batman.js

1. Backbone.js

Backbone.js is the web’s darling framework. You can’t go anywhere without hearing about it and they have an impressive list of brands using it. This was naturally one of the first frameworks I tried. I used it to build some of our internal administrative features at GroupTalent.

Pros: Strong community and lots of momentum. Underscore.js (which it uses heavily) is also a great framework.

Cons: Lacks strong abstractions and leaves something to be desired. The entire framework is surprisingly lightweight and results in lots of boilerplate. The larger an application becomes, the more this becomes apparent.

2. SproutCore 1.x

SproutCore is what Apple used on its iCloud initiative. Despite having a horrible name, it is actually an extremely well thought out framework. It is also one of the largest frameworks.

Pros: Bindings support. Solid community. Tons of features.

Cons: Overly prescriptive. Hard to decouple from unneeded features. Forces a native-like paradigm. I have a serious problem with any framework which discourages using html for layout.

3. Sammy.js

Sammy.js was a smaller framework that I stumbled upon. Due to its simplicity, it almost didn’t make this list. It’s core feature is a routing system to swap out areas of an application with AJAX.

Pros: Simple learning curve. Easier to integrate with an existing server side app.

Cons: Too simple. Not sufficient for larger applications.

4. Spine.js

Based on the name, Spine.js is obviously heavily influenced by backbone. Like backbone, it is very lightweight and follows a similar model.

Pros: Lightweight with good documentation.

Cons: Fundamentally flawed. A core concept of spine is “is asynchronous UIs. In a nutshell, this means that UIs should ideally never block”. Having built a serious non-blocking realtime application in the past, I can say this is entirely unrealistic unless the backend has something like operational transformation.

5. Cappuccino

Cappuccino is one of the more unique frameworks, coming with its own language Objective-J. Cappuccino tries to emulate Cocoa in the browser.

Pros: Large thought-out framework. Good community. Great inheritance model.

Cons: Out of all the languages you could emulate in javascript, Objective-C would be my last choice. This is coming from an iOS developer. I simply can’t get past the idea of programming Objective-J in the browser.

6. Knockout.js

Knockout.js is an MVVM framework that receives lots of praise from its supporters. It stresses declarative UI bindings and automatic UI refresh.

Pros: Binding support. Great documentation and amazing tutorial system.

Cons: Awkward binding syntax and lacks a solid view component hierarchy. I want to be able to reuse components easily. I also feel like identifying as an MVVM framework is deleterious. Hardly any of these frameworks are MVC, but are of the MV* variety (MVP, MVVM, etc).

7. Javascript MVC

Javascript MVC, in the interest of full disclosure, is a framework that I didn’t spend very much time evaluating.

Pros: Solid community and legacy.

Cons: Awkward inheritance model based on strings. Controllers are too intimate with views and lack bindings. The name is way too generic – the equivalent would be if RoR was called “Ruby Web Framework”.

8. Google Web Toolkit

GWT is a serious client-side toolkit that includes more than just a framework. It compiles Java to Javascript, supporting a subset of the standard java library. Google used it internally for Wave.

Pros: Comprehensive framework with great community. Solid Java-based component inheritance model. Great for behemoth client-side applications.

Cons: Despite what Google says, GWT is not going to stand the test of time. With initiatives like DART its clear that Java is not the future of the web. Furthermore, the abstraction of Java on the client is slightly awkward.

9. Google Closure

Google Closure is more of a toolkit than simply a javascript framework. It comes bundled with a compiler and optimizer.

Pros: Use by Google for many of their major apps. Nice component-based ui composition system.

Cons: Lack of UI-binding support.

10. Ember.js

Ember.js (formerly Amber.js SproutCore 2.0) is one of the newest contenders. It is an attempt to extricate the core features from SproutCore 2.0 into a more compact modular framework suited for the web.

Pros: Extremely rich templating system with composed views and UI bindings.

Cons: Relatively new. Documentation leaves lots to be desired.

11. Angular.js

Angular.js is a very nice framework I discovered after I originally posted this review. Developed by Googler’s, it has some very interesting design choices.

Pros: Very well thought out with respect to template scoping and controller design. Has a dependency injection system (I am a big fan of IOC). Supports a rich UI-Binding syntax to make things like filtering and transforming values a breeze.

Cons: Codebase appears to be fairly sprawling and not very modular. Views are not modular enough (will address this in more detail in the cons of Batman.js).

12. Batman.js

Batman.js, created by Shopify, is another framework in a similar vein to Knockout and Angular. Has a nice UI binding system based on html attributes. The only framework written in idiomatic coffeescript, it is also tightly integrated with Node.js and even goes to the extent of having its own (optional) Node.js server.

Pros: Very clean codebase. Has a nice simple approach to binding, persistence, and routing.

Cons: I very much dislike singletons, let alone the idea of enforcing singleton controllers. Suffers from the same ailments as Knockout and Angular with regards to nested components. I want to be able to declaratively reuse more than just templates. What Ember has over these frameworks is a way to declaratively re-use entire components that are backed by their own (possibly controller-level) logic.

The Winner

At the end of the day, Ember.js is the only framework which has everything I desire. I recently ported a relatively small Backbone.js application over to Ember.js and, despite some small performance issues, I am much happier with the resulting code base. Being championed by Yehuda Katz, the community around Ember.js is also amazing. This is definitely the framework to watch out for.

Of course this list is far from comprehensive. Almost all of these frameworks here were discovered by sheer notoriety, word of mouth, or by being mentioned on Hacker News. I am also not reviewing proprietary frameworks (or frameworks with disagreeable licenses – ExtJS anyone?).

 

 

 

82 thoughts on “The Top 10 Javascript MVC Frameworks Reviewed”

  1. “Normally I don’t read article on blogs, however I wish to say that this write-up very compelled me to take a look at and do it! Your writing taste has been amazed me. Thank you, quite nice article.”

  2. Hello there! This article couldn’t be written any better!
    Reading through this article reminds me of my previous roommate!

    He always kept preaching about this. I’ll forward this information to him.
    Pretty sure he’s going to have a great read. Thanks for sharing!

  3. Wonderful blog! I came across it while browsing on Yahoo News.
    Do you possess any suggestions on the way to get indexed in Yahoo News?
    I’ve been trying for quite a while but I never appear to get there!

    Cheers

  4. Be grateful for the auspicious writeup. It in reality had been a
    amusement account it. Look advanced to far added agreeable of your stuff!
    However, how can we communicate?

  5. I’ve learn a number of perfect stuff here.
    Certainly value bookmarking for revisiting. I wonder how a
    great deal effort you determine to make the kind of magnificent informative site.

  6. Thanks on the marvelous posting! I definitely enjoyed reading it, you might be an incredible author.I will
    always bookmark your blog site and could keep coming back someday.
    I would like to encourage anyone to ultimately continue your great posts, possess a nice holiday
    weekend!

  7. Hi there! I’m at work browsing your blog from my new apple
    iphone! Just wanted to say I love reading through your blog and look forward to all your posts!
    Keep up the great work!

  8. We absolutely love your blog and find most of your post’s to be just what I’m looking for.
    Does one offer guest writers to write content available
    for you? I wouldn’t mind publishing a post or elaborating on most of the subjects you write
    related to here. Again, awesome site!

  9. “I’m not sure exactly why but this web site is loading very slow for me. Is anyone else having this problem or is it a problem on my end? I’ll check back later on and see if the problem still exists.”

  10. Just want to say your article is as surprising. The clearness in your post is simply excellent and i
    can assume you are an expert on this subject. Fine with your
    permission allow me to grab your RSS feed
    to keep up to date with forthcoming post.

    Thanks a million and please carry on the gratifying work.

  11. obviously like your web-site but you have to check the spelling on several of your posts.
    Several of them are rife with spelling problems and I in finding it very
    troublesome to inform the truth on the other hand
    I’ll certainly come back again.

  12. Today, I went to the beach with my kids. I found a sea shell and gave it to my
    4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell to her ear and screamed.
    There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear.
    She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is totally off topic but I
    had to tell someone!

  13. Hi There! We are looking for experienced people that are interested in from working their home on a full-time basis. If you want to earn $100 a day, and you don’t mind creating some short opinions up, this is the perfect opportunity for you! Simply check out the link here NOW!

  14. Thanks so much for giving everyone remarkably terrific opportunity to check tips from this site. It really is so pleasurable and packed with amusement for me personally and my office acquaintances to visit your website minimum thrice a week to learn the latest stuff you have. And indeed, I am just usually satisfied with the attractive things served by you. Selected 2 ideas in this post are completely the most effective we have all had.

  15. I as well as my pals happened to be checking out the great secrets and techniques on your site and quickly I had a horrible suspicion I never thanked the site owner for those techniques. All the young boys are actually for that reason excited to read them and have absolutely been enjoying them. I appreciate you for being very thoughtful and also for finding certain amazing subject matter millions of individuals are really desirous to discover. My personal sincere apologies for not expressing appreciation to earlier.

  16. Thank you so much for providing individuals with an extraordinarily special chance to discover important secrets from this site. It’s usually very good and stuffed with a great time for me and my office co-workers to search your blog on the least three times in 7 days to study the latest issues you have. And indeed, I’m actually happy with your sensational knowledge you give. Some two areas in this post are in reality the most effective we’ve ever had.

  17. I intended to compose you this tiny note to help give many thanks as before about the superb tricks you have shared on this website. It is simply shockingly open-handed with you to present openly precisely what a lot of folks would have advertised as an ebook to generate some cash on their own, and in particular considering that you could possibly have tried it in case you considered necessary. These suggestions additionally acted as the fantastic way to understand that someone else have the same keenness just like my personal own to know the truth many more with regards to this issue. I’m sure there are a lot more fun moments ahead for folks who read carefully your blog post.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *