JavaScript for Line of Business Applications

Backbone.js is a lightweight framework that let us create single page applications in a structured manner. It is based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. It is best suited for creating single page applications using a RESTful service for persisting the data. 

Marionette.js is a composite application library built on top of backbone.js and it allows us to build large scale javascript single page application. Backbone.js does not enforce the use of strict MVC pattern but backbone marionette enforces the use of strict MVC pattern. marionette also provides us View classes that we can create and extend simple view, collection views and composite views. It also gives us the possibility of creating Controller classes and eventing mechanism across the application.

Single-Page Applications (SPAs) are Web apps that load a single HTML page and dynamically update that page as the user interacts with the app.

SPAs use AJAX and HTML5 to create fluid and responsive Web apps, without constant page reloads. However, this means much of the work happens on the client side, in JavaScript. For the traditional ASP.NET developer, it can be difficult to make the leap. Luckily, there are many open source JavaScript frameworks that make it easier to create SPAs.

In this article, I’ll walk through creating a simple SPA app. Along the way, I’ll introduce some fundamental concepts for building SPAs, including the Model-View-Controller (MVC) and Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) patterns, data binding and routing.

A mashup demonstrating simultaneous editing of a Data element in a ASP.NET MVC 4 app using Hot Towel SPA template, SignalR and the Diff-Match-Patch JavaScript library.