backbone-pushstate-example

An example Backbone.js application w/ path-only (no #!) URLs via PushState (and more)

This repo contains a very simple Backbone.js app based upon the following resources:

• https://github.com/bouzuya/backbone-pushstate-example (for the app)
• https://gist.github.com/andfinally/8388113 (for the Apache config required to)
• http://readystate4.com/2012/05/17/nginx-and-apache-rewrite-to-support-html5-pushstate/ (for the final Apache config I used)

I had numerous motivations with this repo:

• Demonstrate the use of Backbone.js with the pushState() API to support path-only URLs instead of fragment identifiers (/#route/ becomes /route/)
• Include the necessary Apache/node.js server configuration to support what's called stateless entry. This allows users to enter your Backbone app anywhere, not just at the root
• Make use of a modern JS development toolchain
  • package.json for dependency management as an improvement over vendoring assets
  • Webpack for building a single bundle ./dist/bundle.js as an improvement over using something like Require.js
  • Source maps (via Webpack) ./dist.bundle.js.map
  • Hot Module Reloading (TODO)
  • ES6 (and beyond) support (TODO)
  • Support for more advanced JS features like async/await

Stateless Entry

Stateless entry basically involves serving your index.html in front of a web server that redirects requests that don't directly point to your index.html to it, preserving the path and query parameters along the way. This can be done with using Apache and mod_rewrite:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^index\.html$ - [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.html [L]
</IfModule>

or with a node.js via a simple Express.js server:

const express = require("express");
const path = require("path");
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
const app = express();
const fs = require("fs");

app.use(express.static(__dirname + "/dist"));
app.get("*", function(request, response) {
  response.sendFile(path.resolve(__dirname, "dist", "index.html"));
});
app.listen(port);

How to run this

To run with all the features, including stateless entry, you can either run it with Node (easy) or Apache (requires Docker):

With Node.js

# Install dependencies for the app
npm install

# Use webpack to build a single application JS bundle
npm build

# Start a simple Express.js server
npm run dev

With Apache (via Docker)

# Install dependencies for the app
npm install

# Use webpack to build a single application JS bundle
npm build

# Build the Docker image
docker build -t apache .

# Run it on port 8080 (in the foreground)
docker run -p 8080:80 apache

On Zeit w/ now:

now .

Alternatively, you can run it without stateless entry by running any webserver. I recommend devd.