Book Review - Learning JavaScriptMVC
This is a second time I've been asked by Packt Publishing to review one of their books. Previously it was Instant jqGrid by Gabriel Manricks, this time Learning JavaScriptMVC by Wojciech Bednarski. I don’t use JavaSciptMVC in my daily work, I'm more AngularJS or Knockout guy. This allowed me to approach the book with fresh and open mind.
The book is 124 pages long, this gives about 97 pages of actual content. The author makes his goal to use this space for walking reader through main parts of the framework and leaving him with enough knowledge to start own projects. Let’s see how he tries to achieve this goal.
The book is divided into six chapters. The first one contains usual introduction: general framework description, installation instructions and setup of first demo application which will be extended through entire book. After that the author is taking the reader through core parts of the JavaScriptMVC framework by devoting each one a separate chapter:
- DocumentJS - powerful documentation generation utility
- FuncUnit - QUnit based functional testing framework
- jQueryMX - core of JavaScriptMVC, which provides model-view-controller pattern implementation and a lot of utilities
- StealJS - independent code manager and packaging tool
The last chapter is devoted for creating real-life application. Author is bringing the user through the all high level parts while leaving low level implementation details as a homework for reader.
The biggest advantage of the book is the way of describing the modules of JavaScriptMVC framework. Every one of them is being described as independent tool, so the knowledge which reader gains can be used even when you don't want to use the entire framework. Unfortunately the author is very hasty with demos. The code is lacking proper description, at some moments the reader can feel that the author just keeps throwing more and more lines at him just with purpose of copying them into the editor.
The book provides a well-organized material on the JavaScriptMVC framework which is enough to get one started. From that point the reader should be comfortable enough to use all the online available resources in order to paw his way through the framework details.