JavaScript for Line of Business Applications

Knockout.js is a very powerful 2-way binding MVVM framework for JavaScript built by Steve Sanderson. The basic idea is rather than work directly with the DOM, a ViewModel ties a JavaScript object to the DOM and any updates to the ViewModel are automatically reflected in the DOM and any DOM changes are reflected in the ViewModel. It provides very little opinion on specifics about how to structure applications which makes it flexible.

Below are some tips and tricks I've learned in using Knockout in a few large scale applications.

* Context Issues
* Better ViewModels with a BaseViewModel
* Accidental Rendering Templates
* Using Extenders
* Working with fn
* Require.js
* Custom Bindings
* Conclusion

After being a bit resistant at first, I have happily moved to using require.js to manage dependencies in most of the Knockout.js applications that I have written in the last year or so. With each application, I have tried a number of patterns to make it easier to work with AMD (Asynchronous Module Definition) modules. Recently, I decided to formalize some of these patterns into a lightweight plugin that makes it simple to bind against modules and pull in templates that live in external files.