Knockout TypeScript Frontend Starter

A modern frontend application starter template, leveraging TypeScript, and several popular development tools like Webpack and Babel. This project aims to provide a robust and scalable setup for building responsive and interactive user interfaces without relying on large frontend frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular.

Table of Contents

• Getting Started
• Scripts
• Dependencies
• Building and Running
• Why No React, Vue, or Angular?
• License

Getting Started

To get started with the project, clone the repository and install the dependencies using npm:

git clone knockout-typescript-frontend-starter
cd knockout-typescript-frontend-starter
npm install

Scripts

The following scripts are defined in the package.json:

• build:client: Builds the client for production.
• build:client:dev: Builds the client for development.
• build: Builds the client for production.
• build:dev: Builds the client for development.
• start: Builds the project and starts a production server.
• start:dev: Builds the project in development mode and starts a development server with live-reloading.

You can run these scripts using npm run <script>.

Dependencies

The project has the following core dependencies:

• express: Used for serving the client application in production.
• knockout: A JavaScript library that helps you to create rich, responsive display and editor user interfaces with a clean underlying data model.
• page: A small client-side routing library that decouples the route definitions from the handlers.

Building and Running

Production

To build and start the project in production mode:

npm start

Development

To build and start the project in development mode with live-reloading:

npm run start:dev

Why No React, Vue, or Angular?

While React, Vue, and Angular are excellent frameworks for building modern web applications, there are various reasons you might choose to build a frontend application without them:

1. Performance: Without the overhead of these frameworks, lightweight libraries and vanilla JavaScript can lead to better performance for certain types of applications.

2. Learning Curve: Simplifying the tech stack can be advantageous for developers who are not familiar with these frameworks. Using TypeScript and smaller libraries can be easier to learn and understand.

3. Flexibility: By not being tied to a specific framework, developers can choose specialized tools and libraries that best fit their project's requirements.

4. Bundle Size: Reducing the number of dependencies can result in a smaller bundle size, which can improve load times and performance, especially for mobile users.

5. Control: Using smaller libraries or custom JavaScript allows for more granular control over the application's architecture and behavior, avoiding the "magic" that often comes with larger frameworks.

6. Legacy Code Integration: For projects that need to integrate with older codebases or existing applications, it might be easier to use plain JavaScript or simpler libraries rather than adopting a full-fledged framework.

By focusing on TypeScript and carefully chosen smaller libraries like Knockout and Page.js, this starter template aims to give developers a solid foundation to build modern, scalable, and performant web applications.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.