What is Knockout.js?
Knockout.js is a JavaScript library based on the MVVM pattern with templates. It follows the concept of clear separation between view elements, domain data and data to be displayed. It has well defined specialized code for managing the relationship between view elements. The framework was developed by a Microsoft employee, Steve Sanderson and continues to be an open source project. But the project is not to be considered as a product from Microsoft.
Uses of Knockout
Knockout.js cannot be directly compared to jQuery or other JavaScript frameworks. It is based entirely on designing data-based, scalable user interface. It is a JS library that can be used for creating rich and responsive editor and display UI’s with clean data model. The framework can help easily implement those sections of the interface that update dynamically.
Main Features of Knockout
Some of the main features of Knockout.js are as following:
- Automatic Updating – Knockout.js will automatically update the right sections of the UI when the data model changes.
- Extensible – You can implement bespoke behaviors as fresh declarative bindings that could be easily reused in fewer code lines.
- Declarative Bindings – Easily connect sections of the UI with the data model using declarative bindings. It is possible to easily construct complicated and dynamic user interfaces using randomly nested binding contexts.
- Supports all mainstream browsers, such as IE 6+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome, Opera, Safari (desktop/mobile).
- Works with any web framework. Knockout is made with pure JavaScript.
- It’s Super light-weight. It reduces to 20kb when using HTTP compression.
There are many more features that make Knockout.js an effective library for developing UI’s. It is a pure JS library, which means it can work with any client/server-side technology. It could be added above on top your current web app without the need to make any major structural changes. Most notably, the framework is compact – it contracts to just a few KB’s after being zipped. It has complete set of specifications, which means its functioning could be verified on all types of new platforms and browsers. You can use it on all the currently available browsers too.
The Knockout.js Advantage
Knockout.js brings an easy-to-use way for managing complicated and data-based UI’s. All the elements in the HTML page will check the data (and any changes) for automatically updating the DOM. The elements don’t have to manually track any changes. Thus, Knockout makes everything more efficient and faster.
If you are familiar with ASP.NET NVC, Ruby on Rails, or other MV-based technology, you will see Model-View-View-Model as a real-time form of MVC with declarative syntax. In other words, Knockout.js can be seen as a basic method for creating user interfaces for editing JSON data.