Post on 03-Aug-2015
Building SharePoint Solutions with KnockoutJS
Marc D AndersonSharePoint MVPCo-Founder & PresidentSympraxis Consulting LLC
Who Is Marc?
• Co-Founder and President of Sympraxis Consulting LLC, located in the Boston suburb of Newton, MA, USA. Sympraxis focuses on enabling collaboration throughout the enterprise using the SharePoint application platform.
• Over 30 years of experience in technology professional services and software development. Over a wide-ranging career in consulting as well as line manager positions, Marc has proven himself as a problem solver and leader who can solve difficult technology problems for organizations across a wide variety of industries and organization sizes.
• Author of SPServices• Awarded Microsoft MVP for SharePoint
Server 2011-2015
Session Overview
• Building SharePoint solutions is changing a lot. Just a few years ago, creating an entire application client-side seemed too much like a foolhardy idea. However, with the maturing of many solid JavaScript development tools and frameworks, it's not only possible, but in many cases preferable to server-side development.
• In this session, we'll look at how you can use KnockoutJS as part of your development toolkit. Whether you're building on SharePoint 2007 with SPServices as the data layer or in SharePoint 2013 using REST – or anywhere in between - KnockoutJS can help you build rock solid SharePoint solutions that are adaptive and maintainable.
What is KnockoutJS?
• JavaScript framework• Free and open source• Learning curve• Community support
Source: http://knockoutjs.com/
Why Do We Care?
• Once the page is in the browser, it’s not SharePoint’s anymore
• We can build anything as long as we have the data to support it
• Databinding saves us a lot of work• Adding functionality once the foundation is laid is faster
How Does KnockoutJS Compare to Other Approaches/ Frameworks?• Roll your own• No separation of concerns
• KnockoutJS• Data binding• Templating• Simple Single Page Applications (SPAs)
• AngularJS• Routing• “True” SPAs
High Level Structure of KnockoutJS Functionality with SharePoint
Data Access / Initial Manipulation
Document Ready
ViewModel / Application Logic
Templates
JavaScript
HTML
Application Styling
CSS
Resources
• Ryan “RP” Niemeyer • 10 Things to Know About KnockoutJS on Day One• Utility Functions in KnockoutJS
• Knockout.js pro tips – working with observable arrays• https://github.com/sympmarc/KOBindings
Contact InformationEmail marc.anderson@sympraxisconsulting.
comTwitter @sympmarc
Blog http://sympmarc.com
SPServices http://spservices.codeplex.com
SPXSLT http://spxslt.codeplex.com
Books http://sympmarc.com/books
The Middle Tier Manifesto
http://bit.ly/middletier