JavaScript Web Applications

Chapter 3. Models and Data

One of the challenges with moving state to the client side is data management. Traditionally, you could fetch data directly from the database during the page request, interoperating the result directly into the page. However, data management in stateful JavaScript applications is a completely different process. There’s no request/response model, and you don’t have access to server-side variables. Instead, data is fetched remotely and stored temporarily on the client side.

Although making this transition can be a hassle, there are a few advantages. For example, client-side data access is practically instantaneous, as you’re just fetching it from memory. This can make a real difference to your application’s interface; any interaction with the application gives immediate feedback, often dramatically improving the user’s experience.

How you architect data storage on the client side requires some thought. This is an area riddled with pitfalls and potential traps, often tripping up less-experienced developers—especially as their applications get larger. In this chapter, we’ll cover how best to make that transition, and I’ll give you some recommended patterns and practices.

MVC and Namespacing

Ensuring that there’s a clear separation between your application’s views, state, and data is crucial to keeping its architecture uncluttered and sustainable. With the MVC pattern, data management happens in models (the “M” of MVC). Models should be ...