Dot MVC

A tiny, sensible, client-side MVC framework in modern Javascript. It was created to provide a rich but minimal set of tools for creating scalable and powerful Javascript in the real world of shipping code quickly and correctly.

• API Documentation
• Issues

Installation

npm install dotmvc

Usage

All of the components are accessible as members of the module:

var View       = require('dotmvc').View;
var Controller = require('dotmvc').Controller;
...

Overview

class | mixin Observable (API)

• An observable object is an object that can alert listeners when a property changes, either automatically by setting up observable properties, or manually by calling the triggerPropertyChange() method.
• Observable properties are managed via ES5 getters and setters, meaning simple property assignment is all that is needed to change an observable property and emit a change event.
• If an obseverable property is set to an observable object, change events from that object will cause change events in the parent object to fire, allowing you to nest observable objects.
• Observable properties can either be set to values or functions. The latter will track dependencies, effectively allowing you to have computed observable properties.

Creating an Observable Object

You can either directly instantiate an object from the Observable class, or mixin the methods from Observable.prototype, or subclass it via prototypical inheritance. All three methods will give you the functionality needed to trigger event changes or create observable properties.

Computed Observable Properties

Creating an observable property that is a function will track any dependent observable properties accessed during function evaluation.

__mixin(Person, Observable);
function Person()
{
  Person.observable({
    firstName : 'John',
    lastName  : 'Doe',
    fullName  : function() {
      return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName;
    }
  });
}
 
var person = new Person();
 
person.onPropertyChange({
  firstName: function() { console.log('firstName changed'); },
  fullName: function() { console.log('fullName changed'); }
});
 
person.firstName = 'Bob';

This creates a Person object called person, and wires up some functions to be fired whenever the firstName or fullName properties change. The console output would be:

firstName changed.
fullName changed.

as fullName is a computed observable property with firstName as a dependent property.

Binding (API)

• A Binding is an object that creates a linking between a source object / source property pair, and a target object / target property pair.
• Bindings are used to keep seperate objects and models in sync without them having to be aware of one another.
• The power of bindings comes from the use of Observable objects as the source, allowing property changes in the source to propigate to the target.
• By default, a binding is one-way, meaning that changes in the source are reflected in the target.

class View (API)

• A View in Dot MVC is a super-powered chunk of UI. All display logic and visual code lives inside of a view.
• Every view has an identic, immutable DOM node that is either created during instantiation, or passed in to the constructor.
• A view is drawn via its render() method. This method is responsible for updating the DOM to reflect the state of the view and its bound data. The default behavior depends on whether the view has a template or layout set.
• Views have an observable context property that corresponds to the data that is currently bound to that view. If the context is observable and emits change events, the view will automatically be re-rendered.
• A view can have either a layout or a template (or neither). Both specify HTML that is to be dumped into the view, but with different semantics.

Interacting with the DOM

To access a view's root DOM node, use its element property, or the cached jQuery object $element. Don't use global jQuery selectors to find elements within the view, use the proxied find function with the $ method on the view:

var index = this.$('li.selected').data('index');

Event Delegation

Event delegation is powered by jQuery's on() method. This allows you to specify a callback on the root, immutable view DOM node that will catch any events bubbling up from within. All callbacks are automatically bound to the view's this pointer.

this.delegate('li', 'click', this.onItemClick);

This means even if the DOM identites of the internal elements change (or are added after the delegate method is called), events will still be caught as expected.

Commands

A view should not contain any business or domain logic, but rather delegate any interaction to either its own data context or a higher-level object, via a command. Commands bubble up the DOM hierarchy until finding a view whose own data context can handle the command.

this.executeCommand({ saveUserPreferences: user });

With a shortcut for delegating DOM events to fire off commands:

this.delegateCommand('#save-button', 'click', { saveUserPreferences: user });

Layouts vs Templates

A view can either have a template, or a layout, or neither... in which case all render logic must be done by hand.

Both templates and layouts are functions that generate HTML when passed a reference to the view. Underscore, Handlebars, etc. can compile functions like this.

A template will be injected into a view on every render. This means the entire previous HTML content of a view is lost, along with any DOM nodes, their events, and data (events bound with delegate are bound to the view's DOM root-- which doesn't change). This is best for simple views whose content represents a single object.

A layout will only be injected into a view once, guaranteeing the identity of the layout DOM elements does not change. This is best when designing larger views that a composed of several smaller subviews.

Both layouts and templates can be set with their corresponding instance methods or on the View's constructor as a "static property", e.g.,

WidgetView.TEMPLATE = htmlTemplatingFunction;

// Only works if the view has been initialized yet
myView.setTemplate(htmlTemplatingFunction);

Creating Sub Views

Compositing views can be done by using the createViews() method to instantiate a new View on an existing interior DOM node. Calling this method while using a template will log a warning, as the identity of interior DOM could potentially change, losing the sub view (see Layouts vs Templates above).

this.createViews({
  '.view-widget-detail': {
    View: WidgetDetail,
    context: new Binding(this, 'context.currentGroup.currentWidget')
  },
  '.view-group-detail': {
    View: WidgetGroup,
    context: new Binding(this, 'context.currentGroup')
  }
});

The hash is a mapping between a jQuery selector and information on how to create the subview. The View parameter specifies the view class, and the context parameter can either be a Binding or just an object.

Application (API)

Controller (API)

Testing

$ npm test

License

MIT