Benefits of batman.js in angular.js?

Question

I am planning to start a new complex project with ruby on rails, and I am currently thinking of which frontend-framework to use. I have never used one before.

Reading the docs, batman.js becomes really interesting. I would love to do things like "@post.comments" on the client side to get all comments for a given post - with nearly zero configuration. I am afraid of duplicated code if using a mvc-framework in the frontend and guess batman.js will reduce it. But in comparison to angular, batman does not gain from much support in the community (see Google Trends for example).

So my question is, is it possible to have the benefits of a batman.js-app in an angular-application with a little configuration? Do you have any good links for a good rails-integration?

Answer 1

I guess this is relevant to the batman.js side. We have a couple Rails + batman.js apps in production already and we'll be launching another one soon. Here are the advantages and disadvantages we've found:

Advantages:

• Ruby & Rails-inspired syntax & architecture (eg, model associations, naming conventions, routing)
• Easily integrates with Rails (batman-rails gem, JSON REST communication, CoffeeScript, Slim templates)
• Easy to implement real-time updates (we're using Pusher)

Disadvantages:

• Low "googleability". Not as widely used as Ember, Angular, Backbone etc.
• Underdocumented. All our developers dive into the source from time to time.

For my part, I'm enjoying batman.js a lot and I'm trying to make up for the shortcomings by adding to documentation and being active on IRC, github and the google group. Good luck in your decision!