One Hit K.O.

(documentation in progress!)

OHKO, Knockout, Backbone and Knockback shorthands for Single Page Applications. Provides a set of classes and methods to avoid repeating yourself while doing common tasks such as creating data or collection bindings, routing your application, or saving a session.

Features

• Application wrapper
• Navigtion bindings
• SPA router boilerplate with Backbone and Knockback
• Basic profile/session template
• Rails friendly backbone configuration
• Data binding collection manipulation (paging, sorting)
• Utility model methods
• Utility view model methods

Introduction

When I began writing SPA applications, one library that caught my attention was Knockout.js, due to its simplicity and lack of additional requirements. On the other hand, Backbone.js is proven to be one of the most mature and stable libraries for JSON based RESTful applications. The first, provides an excelent way to connect data with views, but falls short of a strong model definition. The second, provides a robust way to manipulate models, but does not make it so easy to work with views. There is where Knockback.js enters, to provide a bridge between them both.

Nevertheless, I realised that i was repeating my self again and again when doing basic things such as defining view models and observables. For instance (using knockback):

class ViewModel extends kb.ViewModel
  constructor: (model) ->
    @username = kb.observable(model, 'username')
    @password = kb.observable(model, 'password')
    @tags = kb.collectionObservable(model.get('tags'), {view_model: TagViewModel})
    @tags_changed = kb.triggeredObservable(@tags, 'change add remove')
    @tags_empty = kb.computed => @tags_changed(); @tags().length isnt 0

with OHKO:

class ViewModel extends ohko.Model
  constructor: (model) ->
    @bind ['username', 'password'], from: model
    @indexes model.get('tags'), view_model: TagViewModel

@tags_empty, @tags_changed, and many other helpers for collection model.get('tags') are available now from view, as well as @username and @password for model.