Book Review: Learning JavaScriptMVC

Packt Publishing invited me to review the recently published Learning JavaScriptMVC by Wojciech Bednarski. I describe my impressions of this book on JavaScriptMVC in this post. Before beginning my review, I'll quote the description of JavaScriptMVC from its web site: "A collection of the best practices and tools for building JavaScript applications" that is "built on top of jQuery." I reviewed the ebook (PDF) version of Learning JavaScriptMVC.

Learning JavaScriptMVC: Learn to build well-structured JavaScript web applications using JavaScriptMVC is a 100+ page book with six chapters. The Preface states that readers should "be familiar with JavaScript, browser APIs, jQuery, HTML5, and CSS." It also states that the book is intended "for anyone who is interested in developing small- and mid-size web applications with the JavaScriptMVC framework, which is based on the most popular JavaScript library – jQuery."

Chapter 1: Getting Started with JavaScriptMVC

The first chapter introduces "JavaScriptMVC (JMVC)" as "a JavaScript open source model-view-controller (MVC) framework" built "on top of the jQuery library." The chapter describes other aspects of JavaScript MVC such as historical details, basic objectives, license information, JavaScriptMVC architecture, the four major components of JavaScriptMVC (StealJS, FuncUnit, jQueryMX, and DocumentJS), and links for more information. A paragraph in this first chapter discusses future plans to rename (DoneJS (jQuery++) and CanJS) and make changes to the JavaScriptMVC framework and to some of its major components.

Chapter 1 includes details on three different approaches for installing JavaScriptMVC. One of the demonstrated approaches is via Vagrant and Oracle VM VirtualBox.

The first chapter also demonstrates using JavaScriptMVC with a sample application that can be compared to a similar sample to-do application built with other web frameworks at https://github.com/tastejs/todomvc/tree/gh-pages/architecture-examples. Several common web development techniques and tools are covered as part of this example: Google Chrome Inspector, jQueryMX, and Embedded JavaScript (EJS).

Chapter 2: DocumentJS

Chapter 2 covers DocumentJS, which it introduces as "a powerful, yet simple tool designed to easily create searchable documentation for any JavaScript codebase." I think it's worth re-emphasizing here that this is an independent tool that can be used with any JavaScript code base and is not limited to use on JavaScriptMVC applications.

Bednarski states in this second chapter that DocumentJS is quickly learned by anyone familiar with JSDoc, YUIDoc, YARD, or other Javadoc documentation tools. He also cites DocumentJS's support for Markdown as one of its advantages. This chapter adds documentation comments (look and feel a lot like Javadoc) to the code introduced for the sample application in Chapter 1 before covering how to generate documentation from these special source code comments.

Chapter 3: FuncUnit

The third chapter is devoted to FuncUnit, which it describes as "a functional testing framework with jQuery-like syntax" that "is built on top of the QUnit unit test framework." The chapter contrasts functional testing to unit testing and demonstrates using related tools Selenium, PhantomJS, and Envjs along with Maven and Jenkins.

Chapter 4: jQueryMX

The fourth chapter focuses on jQueryMX and describes jQueryMX as "a collection of jQuery libraries that provides functionality necessary to implement and organize large JavaScript applications." The chapter covers several jQueryMX plugins such as jQuery.Class (based on John Resig's Simple JavaScript Inheritance), jQuery.Model, and jQuery.View.

Chapter 5: StealJS

Chapter 5 covers StealJS and describes it as an "independent code manager and packaging tool." The chapter also states that "StealJS requires Java 1.6 or greater." The chapter demonstrates using StealJS to load files, to log, to clean/beautify code, and to concatenate and compress code. Related tools mentioned in this chapter include Google Closure and JSLint.

Chapter 6: Building the App

The final chapter's stated goal is "to show how to build a real-word application from concept through design, implementation, documentation, and testing." Along the way, the chapter mentions many process-related issues including use of Trello, Trac, JIRA, and Git. The example in the chapter also demonstrates using IndexedDB, PouchDB, and Sass.

Similarly to the first chapter, the last chapter is code-intensive as the entire application's code base is included in the chapter.

Positives

• Conciseness - The author limits background details and opinions to sentences rather than the normal paragraphs or pages many authors devote to background and opinions.
• Code Examples - The book is code-heavy with numerous pages devoted to code listings and to commands for running various tools.
• Frame of Reference - This book's most useful feature may be that it provides an overall frame of reference for understanding what the JavaScriptMVC framework is. With the overall framework understood at a high level, the reader can go to other resources for additional or more in-depth details.
• References - The book's conciseness (just over 100 pages total) leaves many details out and so it is helpful that it has numerous references to online resources with additional details.
• Truth in Advertising - The book's preface stated that this book is intended for readers familiar with "JavaScript, browser APIs, jQuery, HTML5, and CSS." This is not overstated; the heavy use of code (especially JavaScript) means that the book is going to be much more useful to those already familiar with JavaScript and related technologies than those not familiar with those technologies. As the "Learning" part of the title implies, this book is an introductory book rather than a detailed reference book.

Negatives

• Grammar and Sentence Structure - One of the advantages traditionally associated with books when compared to blogs is better spelling, grammar, and sentence structure in books. This is typically because books (and even articles) typically have much more editorial process than blog posts (the latter of which often have no editorial process). Unfortunately, much of this book felt like very little editing had occurred in the book publication process. There were numerous disjoint sentences and a couple cases where the chosen words did not seem to be used properly in the context in which they were used.
• Good Online Documentation - This is really not a disadvantage of Learning JavaScriptMVC, but I thought it worth pointing out for those trying to decide whether to purchase the book. The online documentation for JavaScriptMVC seems fairly thorough and clear and might be sufficient for those wanting to learn and use JavaScriptMVC. In fact, the JavaScriptMVC documentation even includes its own To-Do example application. I often prefer having a printed or electronic copy of a book because they have some advantages, but this is also a matter of taste. It is important to reiterate that this book is an introductory book rather than a reference book.

Conclusion

I was happy to read Learning JavaScriptMVC and become more acquainted with JavaScriptMVC and how it fits in with other popular web development technologies and tools. This book seems best suited for developers who are about to use JavaScriptMVC without significant previous experience using that framework but with experience with JavaScript and other common web technologies. Learning JavaScriptMVC provides a different introductory perspective than the well-written online documentation and is filled with code examples demonstrating the concepts.