#MCHammer - model-controller framework

A very simple framework for developing complex javascript applications/interactions.

It is based on a publish/subscribe model or an event model, however you want to look at it.

#What problem does this solve?

In the typical jQuery/ajax based web application you manipulate html elements from ajax requests or various events. And when you need to save into ajax requsts or propagate data to many places, you read the data from said elements, etc.

This can work reasonably well for simple applications with few states, but as your application grows, these kinds of bindings can get pretty messy and the code often feels bulky, it gets hard to make changes and you loose overview of how the application works.

It's probably possible to avoid this anti-pattern with really rigurous rules and by simply being an awesome super-coder, but unfortunately not everybody possesses such powers. Yours truly included. Which is why I created this framework.

#How does MCHammer solve this problem?

Instead of manipulating html data directly through ajax requests and/or passing data to ajax requests directly from the DOM in your events (with all the nested callbacks, closures or other anti-patterns, you bind functions to specific named events when you start your app.

Then you define your JS events in any way you normally would using jQuery or hand-coding them or however you're used to doing them, but instead of calling your own functions or doing manipulations/ajax requests on the event, you trigger your predefined MCHammer events at that point and only pass on an ID of the data entry that triggered the event.

All your functions are always called within the same scope, and you always have access to the record you're editing, so passing objects and data around becomes predictable and you won't have scope-creep.

Additionally the framework provides built-in events that get triggered when a record gets updated, removed or added, which means it gets easy to update the visual controls/elements you're using globally if that data is displayed in multiple places.

#Flexibility

No need to jam your whole app into the framework

You don't need to build your app from the ground up using MCHammer. In fact, I can't see how that would be possible, since it's not suited for that purpose anyway.

Well suited for even the smallest features

You can simply continue to use/write all your existing code and if there is a particular feature you're working on which you think MCHammer will be well suited for, you can use it only for that feature if you like. The footprint is quite small.

The uncompressed code is around 15KB and using the YUI compressor (the version you'll probably end up using in production) the size goes down to 2.4KB as of writing.

Plays very nice with any JS library

MCHammer doesn't make any changes to any JS prototypes etc and has no external dependencies (such as jQuery, prototype, underscore.js, templating libraries, etc).

So you can continue to use whatever you're currently using.

No routing or "controller"

The framework is called MC Hammer - as in Model-Controller-Hammer, but there isn't really any "controller" per se. Instead all functionality is implemented through special events.

Many of the JS frameworks out there, such as knockout.js, backbone.js, spine.js, etc. provide some form of routing mechanism and/or controller paradigm to make the app respond to different #! (hash-bang) URLs. MCHammer doesn't hanve anything like that, so if you're building an app that requires something like that, you'll need to find/create something that provides that functionality.

#Usage

The only thing you need to do to start using MCHammer is to inclue the mchammer.js file in your code. There are no requirements on having to put it in the HEAD of the document or at the bottom or anything like that.

You can also start assigning events and triggers before the DOM finishes loading, so you don't really have to put your initialization stuff in a $(document).ready() definition. Just realize that if you're using the DOM in any of them it won't be ready yet.

Code examples

There are a couple of examples of how to build something using MCHammer in the "examples" folder in the repository. Feel free to play with those to get a sense for how apps can be structured using it.

#Bugs, issues, feature requests

You can submit issues and/or feature requests using the github issue tracker or simply email me, arnorhs@gmail.com

Go ahead and fork the application as well and do a pull request if you have something to contribute.

Even spelling error fixes are welcome. I probably could need them since I'm not a native english speaker.