Way.js – Simple two-way databinding

Way.js – Simple two-way databinding(github.com)

48 points by Xelom 11 years ago | 19 comments

Was posted 3 days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8176672

pygy_ 11 years ago | |

lhorie's comment still applies here: Mithril.js does more than this library, and it weigths 10 times less, minified and gzipped (~5KB vs ~50KB, with dependencies).

http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/

hackerboos 11 years ago | | |

I've been seriously looking at Mithril.js. I like that it doesn't use any strange Javascript templating.

I'd love to see the Todo MVC app done in Mithril.js.

benihana 11 years ago | | |

I'm looking at this link https://github.com/gwendall/way.js/blob/master/way.min.js and github is telling me the minified version is only 9k. Not sure where you're getting 50k from.

Also, I looked at your mithril link and even though it's a smaller file size, the framework does way more than just databinding, which seems to be the only thing way.js does.

Lavinski 11 years ago |

http://knockoutjs.com/ is also a great simple data binding lib but without any dependencies.

muraiki 11 years ago | |

I recently looked into React and Knockout at work, as previously we had been using JQuery for all frontend stuff. I'm not much of a frontend developer, but I found things to like about both React and KO. We aren't making single page apps, but we do need to create more rich user interfaces in the browser. I spent a week exploring both, creating two different UIs in each.

For environments where you don't have dedicated frontend people, I think Knockout is more approachable. I very much like the flow based programming ideas behind React, but in the end I think the need to either learn/implement the Flux architecture or having to follow chains of Javascript callbacks really dissuaded my coworkers from supporting it.

KO has a more familiar template-like approach. And now that the latest version also offers components, I like that I can use templates where they work and switch to components when necessary, which should eliminate some of the boilerplate I faced in React. I'm very excited to try out the new KO features, and I'm always surprised to not see much mention of KO in front end discussions at HN.

That being said, while working with KO there were times where I created bugs that would have been impossible or difficult to create with React. But I think for a team of backend developers that don't do much frontend work and who aren't that familiar with functional programming, React (whether callback property style or using Flux) is too much of a jump. For personal projects I'm interested in trying out React+Flux, though.

j_s 11 years ago | | |

If you're going to dig any further into React, check out cortex's approach to simplifying nested data: https://github.com/mquan/cortex

noir_lord 11 years ago | |

I absolutely adore KnockoutJS, it's completely changed the way I write JS (I'm not a huge fan of or user of javascript) and 3.2 has added component support (with templates) which for me is a huge bonus as I was doing something similar manually.

johnnymonster 11 years ago | |

I love knockout as well, however, I would love to see something like this added. Not having to declare all bindings and just auto bind to a form would be pretty useful for small stuff like single page forms.

alz 11 years ago |

this is cool, but it's a bit misleading to declare something 'lightweight' if it has 5 dependencies including jquery and underscore

ges 11 years ago | |

it is now dependency-free

julius 11 years ago |

I think AngularJS has a very strong 2-way databinding offering (with its many directives and implicit data-change detection).

It is actually possible to just use the databinding features of AngularJS without all the framework stuff. Just need a few lines of Javascript to get yourself a scope.

Or just use my code: https://github.com/julius/AngularLite

the8472 11 years ago |

An alternative to declaring bindings in HTML is to generate the forms with javascript and bind the data with d3js. 2-way binding should be achievable with d3's support for event handlers. That should also provide more flexibility as you can always drop down to DOM APIS or include other Javascript-based form controls.