MVC Start-up Kit (jQuery version)

Check branches for Library Agnostic version.

Description

Basic JavaScript implementation of the classic MVC design pattern.

I found that full scale frameworks such as JavaScriptMVC, Backbone and Spine are great in the sense that they give you a lot of functionality, but I personally found them to be:

• really confusing (especially if you're trying to learn about MVC on the client-side)
• force you to use a particular architecture that you're not used (and 'for me' the majority of the time feels very alien)

So in typical programmer fashion, I decided to 'roll my own' (once I have this in a more stable state then I'll write up an article about it all).

I find this start-up kit gets me up and running very quickly utilising the MVC paradigm without loads of extra cruft I'm never going to use. But be aware that I had a very specific API design in mind when writing this library and so this might not necessarily work for every one.

There is lots to do with this project to get it to a stage where it's anywhere near production ready, but it was very interesting researching and building it.

Goals/Features

• Very simple/logical folder structure (I don't like complicated set-ups)
• Modular (built to comply with the AMD specification and uses RequireJs - if you're new to AMD or RequireJs then this post will help explain: Beginners Guide to AMD and RequireJs)
• Basic template engine.
• Publisher/Subscriber event system.
• Utilises Deferred/Promises for asynchronous tasks.
• Easy to understand (I heavily comment my code, with the understanding that comments will be stripped at deployment via a 'build script'. See the RequireJs optimiser information in the above article link)
• Tried to wrap certain implementations features so it becomes easier to swap out the implementation for your own or another library
• Tried to keep a balance between static features/methods/properties (i.e. those that appear on all instances of a Controller) and instance specific features/methods/properties (this was so to help automate as much of the standard set-up as possible).
• Two versions - one jQuery (as it makes this repo more appealing - I'm guessing - to jQuery users) and one which is library agnostic (I'm only using jQuery for: Simple PubSub + Deferred/Promises + basic event handling so is simple to swap out)