Is backbone.js production ready?

Question

I was recently hired at a startup as the front end developer. As our product is a user admin that will be used by financial organizations, we want the app to run as much like an application as possible. I have been tasked with finding the clientside framework.

After researching, I have chosen backbone.js. When I presented this choice today, I was asked some questions that I do not have the full answers for but thought you guys might.

1. Is backbone.js production ready?
   Is it rock solid and is there any proof? I will only be using models, views, and collections for this app. My question is, how confident can I be that backbone will not just randomly fail when dealing with models. Are there any official tests I might be able to look at? What are your experiences with backbone?

2. Is there any sort of support network in place for dealing with backbone related issues?

Answers to either of these questions as well as any insights you have that I could present to my boss would be most appreciated! I Really want to use backbone as I think its a perfect fit, but because its so new, I need to sell it.

Thanks in advance!

Wheeling

Here is a nice list of companies using backbone.js currently. Could be worth emailing them and picking their brains on their experience. Projects and Companies – Wheeling

Answer 1

Is Backbone.js production ready?

Take a look at Backbone's example section. Some of its better known users include:

• DocumentCloud themselves.
• 37signals for BaseCamp Mobile.
• SoundCloud for their mobile site.
• BitTorrent in a manner that is not immediately obvious from the description, but seemingly related to a beta product.

Is there a support network in place?

There is, of course, no guarantee that it will be supported by its authors indefinitely, but it has gained a lot of traction very quickly so I don't see it going anywhere soon. The authors recommend reporting issues on GitHub.

There is always Stack Overflow itself for support!

Institute

Awesome. Just the kind of answers I was looking for. Im going to let it ride a bit more but I upvoted you. – Wheeling

Answer 2

I too was looking for a front-end app framework a few months ago. Here's the list of requirements that we had and how Backbone.js responded to each of those:

1. Browser support (IE8+)

There is one caveat here: The backbone.history module makes use of hashchange event, which doesn't work in IE7 and below. There are ways to hack around this problem, so it's not a show stopper, but kind of an annoyance.

2. The ability to apply our own look and feel to UI elements

As backbone only enforces the MVC structure of your app (unlike frameworks like cappucino or sproutcore) this was a perfect fit for us.

3. Being able to hook up any other external JavaScript libraries

We were using jQuery already, and backbone supports it, so that was fine. However, it seems like backbone is trying to take a library agnostic approach (for instance you can use zepto.js instead of jQuery if you like).

4. Community Support

There is a lot of introductory material on backbone (like people posting tutorials on blogs). Unfortunately, when your APP get's complicated it turned out there were quite a few "architectural" parts we had to figure out by ourselves, there was no obvious way to do it. The DOCS are good, but not great.

I guess on of the pitfalls of opinionated frameworks (like rails), is that sometimes you get caught up in a "am I doing this right" feeling.

5. Real world examples

It's always convincing to see that someone else has actually done something "REAL" with backbone:

http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#examples

We ended up using Backbone, and it was overall a nice experience, and I will definetively be looking into it again for our next project.

Kacey

@MatthewLock Looks like it doesn't -> github.com/documentcloud/backbone/issues/636 – Kacey

Answer 3

1. Who is to say that something is production ready better than the product users?

   I'm working with backbone.js on a relatively large project (livechat operator application, 13k+ lines, currently at early beta). I have more than three months of experience with backbone and in my opinion it's excellent. I haven't had any unpleasant surprises because of backbone. I can't imagine developing an app of this size without clean and well-structured code. With backbone you can achieve that easily.

   There's also an excellent bonus when using backbone - underscore.js. You will use that a lot.

2. StackOverflow backbone.js tag is there for you!

Your company, being a startup, cannot be afraid of new things. You should adapt them and spread your experiences. Remember, that your product is also going to be new.

Amphicoelous

Answer 4

A little late to the game with this answer but I felt compelled to respond to the question "how confident can I be that backbone will not just randomly fail when dealing with models".

No code just randomly fails; code fails for a specific reason which can always be traced back to somewhere. Often code appears to randomly fail because it's so complex and obtuse you can't follow it. In the case of backbone.js, the source is small (1,500 lines FULLY documented) and REALLY well documented.

If you need to trace down what is breaking, it's a simple matter of diving into the source and seeing what is going on.

Anyhow, I hope you got to try it out at your job!

Elanorelapid

Answer 5

At Planbox We've been using Backbone JS in in production for over 6 months without any problems. I wrote a few posts about our experience here and here.

We even use Backbone JS for our mobile version along with jQuery.

Cockney