Hello World to Durandal JS

Durandal is a new javascript framework by Rob Eisenberg (EisenbergEffect – the same cat that put together Caliburn.Micro) that tries to answer the question “can rich web applications exist and be composed elegantly in today’s front-end HTML5/JS/CSS3 world?” I would like to think that this framework definitely answers that question and does a little more.

You need to understand that Rob composed Caliburn, which is a XAML’y framework for composing views/areas/viewModels that are independent, exchangeable, and can talk to one another (through an eventing bus). Much of what Caliburn is can be found in Microsoft’s Patterns and Practices’ Prism project. Needless to say, Rob understands frameworks at a deep level.

So what is in Durandal? It uses Require js, Knockout js, jQuery, and Sammy js (for routing and navigating – though it isn’t needed) to create a framework where views are composed and switched in and out based on user input/feedback. Doesn’t that all sound swell? Let’s see some code then shall we?