How would MVC-like code work in Node.js?

Question

I'm starting to get my head around node.js, and I'm trying to figure out how I would do normal MVC stuff. For example, here's a Django view that pulls two sets of records from the database, and sends them to be rendered in a template.

def view(request):
    things1 = ThingsOne.objects.all()
    things2 = ThingsTwo.objects.all()
    render_to_response('template.html, {'things1': things1, 'things2': things2})

What might a similar node.js function look like?

Answer 1

http://boldr.net/mvc-stack-node-js-ejsgi-scylla-mustache is a great little article with a full github example of a MVC pattern using dirfferent Node modules. It also lists alternate modules currently available. It answered this question for me better than http://howtonode.org/ which has some good tuts but I couldn't find anything on MVC there.

Answer 2

The easiest way to do this is with expressjs, which is an MVC framework for Node. Node is just what it says, evented I/O for the web.

The example on the http://expressjs.com should help with the basics but to answer your question directly.

var express = require('express');

var app = express.createServer();

app.get('/whatever', function(req, res) {

  Things1.objects.getAll(function(things1) {
    Things2.objects.getAll(function(things2) {
      var options = { locals: { things1: things1, things2: things2 }};
      res.render('thingstemplate.ejs', options); // or thingstemplate.jade or whatever
   });
  });
});

app.listen('80', ''); // port and optional hostname to bind

Answer 3

TowerJS is a popular MVC framework based on

• MongoDB (database)
• Redis (background jobs)
• CoffeeScript
• Stylus
• Jasmine (tests)
• jQuery

Site http://towerjs.org/

Source https://github.com/viatropos/tower

Answer 4

RailwayJS is a MVC framework, written in JavaScript based on ExpressJS and runs over nodeJS platform. It is inspired by Ruby on Rails framework. You can read about MVC architecture of RailwayJS here: http://jsmantras.com/blog/RailwayJS-Routing