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I am currently starting a massive web app project, and one of the requirements is that down the line I may be required to allow an iOS and Android app to interface with my application, I figured the best solution was to create a RESTful API and have the web application interface with it. However, my coworker who does front end development is unfamiliar with using a javascript framework such as backbone.js (more of a library I know), ember.js or angular.js. Since we're using asp.net I figured that the I could handle authentication and routing using asp.net MVC, delivering seperate views depending on the route, and he can handle the data manipulation only, However, I can't seem to figure out how to seperate routing from the javascript framework, I've looked into ember.js and backbone and both of them seem to require routing to be handled on their end for it to really work.

Does anyone have any idea how to implement data manipulation without the need for routing?

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Can you clarify what you mean by data manipulation? –  Mike Grassotti Aug 21 '13 at 3:06
    
Get a new front-end developer. –  torazaburo Aug 21 '13 at 17:31
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2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

What you are describing is generally called API oriented architecture, meaning you have a RESTful service on a back-end and rich client-side application on front end.

The point is, it basically does not matter what technology you pick up on server. It could be anything: ASP.NET MVC, Web API, Express.js or Django. As soon as it's really RESTful and pure. By purity I mean, it deals only with data, no serving of HTML or something.

Server just specify the interface you work with data,

GET   /invoices        // get all invoices
GET   /invoices/:id    // get invoice by id
POST  /invoices        // post new invoice

If you confident with .NET, WebAPI is probably good choice. Typically you would prefer JSON output, WebAPI could handle content negotiation for you.

Now, the client job is to consume the API data and dynamically create HTML in browser. A lot of options now: Backbone.js, Angular.js etc.

Please be aware: client side routing and server side routing are completely different things.

Server side routing: routes particular HTTP request to particular controllers action (or any function).

Client side routing: detects the URL change and triggers corresponding JavaScript function to handle change. Client side routing is vital for SPA (single page applications). You can find a bit more information on SPA on that blog post.

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up vote 1 down vote

Have a look at KnockoutJS, which would allow you to use ASP.NET MVC for routing or another JavaScript library like sammy.js (just for routing) or Durandal (for routing and navigation).

Note: Durandal version 1 used sammy.js internally, but version 2 has a custom routing engine and no longer uses sammy.js.

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