Javascript Frameworks

I found myself researching javascript frameworks last night and thought I’d share a bit of knowledge. The killer feature of a javascript framework is that you can setup a model (think object) or collection (think array of objects), bind a dom element to that model or collection and then any changes made directly to the model will automatically update the dom. Some of them even support two-way binding, meaning that if you update a form field (or anything else) that is attached to a model, it will update the model and then the model will update the dom. It can all be a bit confusing at first, but you can find several live examples on knockout.js.

There are a lot of different frameworks out there and I’m not really attached to a particular one right now, so here’s a quick list of the ones I’ve been researching.

Backbone.js One of the first ones out there. Very low level and powerful, but it’s a lot more leg work to get anything done.

Spine.js This was built in response to backbone.js, it appears to be another low level implementation.

Knockout.js High level, bindings are directly in the dom instead of attached in the JS. There appears to be a great community around this one.

Ember.js Don’t know anything about it but I’ve heard good things. High level and seems to be comparable to knockout.js.

Angular.js One more higher level framework, this one built by google.

If you’ve had any experience with these I’d love to hear about it!