CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpjavascriptnode.jsbackbone.js
Preslav Rachev
Preslav Rachev

Reputation: 4003

Reuse a backbone application on the server side to render a view on the server side

I am working onr a backbone.js app, where one of my views is a complex feed with different types of subviews.

I will have to generate a static version of that view to be usd for email purposes. I am looking for the most practical solution that will allow me to reuse as much as I can from the existing code without duplication

I came up with two options:

  1. Generate the view statically using php. This will men that I will have to duplicate a lot of the logic because of the different languages.
  2. Set up a simple nodejs http server which will reuse most of the app logic to create a view on the server side. This sounds nice, but I am still unaware how practical such a solution will be in the long run. For ecample, I am completely unaware whether I would be able to use Jquery on the server side to create the layout from an existing html file.

Which one of he two options should I go for and why? Or perhaps there is a third one?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 526

Answers (1)

Chris Salzberg
Chris Salzberg

Reputation: 27374

I debated a long time about this exact issue when I started working on my first backbone.js app, because like you I thought it would be a waste to duplicate so much view code. I'm working in rails, and my goal was to use the same format (haml) for partials on the server (haml/ruby) and templates on the client (haml/coffeescript), but that proved to be impossible and anyway not very advisable.

Anyway though, after having worked on the app for several months, I've come to the conclusion that the duplication is not a major issue. It certainly is not worth it trying to avoid duplication if the end result is only a couple of pages. Also, in my case at least, the static page I'm sending from the server did not end up having exactly the same structure as the templates that backbone.js renders, so it's not 100% duplication anyway.

Not sure if that helps, but in any case I'd suggest first duplicating the page and see how much extra work is actually involved. More complex solutions like #2 with the nodejs server strike me as overkill unless you'll really be serving a lot of pages this way.

For what it's worth, here are a few discussions of the topic on SO:

Rails Client side / Server side rendering using single template (handlebars or Mustache) with Sammy.js

Template language that works on both server and client

Upvotes: 2

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