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I've used Backbone.js and LOVE it.

Recently I came across qooxdoo and honestly? It seem to be even better (for OOP code design)!
Full OOP support (love the inheritance [this.base], namespacing etc').
I haven't gone too deep into it yet, so I was searching for comparison with Backbone.js without any success.

So, if you've used both - what can you say about qooxdoo in relation to Backbone.js?

I'm not talking about features such as the "model persisting" (save/delete ajax calls) in Backbone nor features like UI in qooxdoo (qx.ui.form.Button), but rather the coding structure and maintainability.

ThomasH
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Poni
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4 Answers4

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My experience with Backbone.js is some what limited, but it is well suited for creating data heavy web applications. Being able to sit any UI on top of it makes it extremely flexible. As for code maintenance, code organization of Backbone really depends on the developer. Using other libraries (require.js) definitely aid in the organization, but still a lot of effort and up front planning is required.

Qooxdoo on the other hand is a completely different beast. With its own type system at its core, Qooxdoo really elevates itself to a classical language sitting on top of javascript, which demands good code organization. That's not saying you can't write disorganized code with it, but it just makes it easier to organize large projects.

Because qooxdoo is more of a language than a framework [sans, of course, its rich UI and data components, which are very good] you can literally do anything with it, re-creating all the benefits of Backbone while easily adding in nice features - strongly defined classes (of all types, models, controllers, views, et al) - AND generate [excellent] documentation from those classes to boot!

The ability to define interfaces, classes, mixins, inheritence, properties, access modifiers(!) etc(...) in a classical sense (ala Java/C#/...) while staying inside a very well defined namespaced file/class structure, really lifts qooxdoo above everything else out there. Its type system is so nice in fact, that they have even separated it from its UI components to be used standalone in browser apps, or on the server with node.js/rhino apps. It is stellar.

Anyway, I am highly biased toward qooxdoo, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. :)

schlomie
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I have used both. For smallish apps, more like web pages with some functionality in them than really heavy applications that just happen to use the browser for their UI, qooxdoo is overkill. For most intranet apps I've come across, which have rich UI, several different forms, make heavy use of many different UI controls (table, tree, combos, split panes, tab views etc.) qooxdoo is IMO the better choice.

It's not that you can't build either type with one or the other. It's just that qooxdoo makes it easier to work on large code bases, provides nice but unconstraining support for a MV(C|P) architecture, has good support for various backend types (REST, RPC, with either JSON or XML) out of the box, excellent unit testing support, separation of concerns re. theming and functionality - lots of useful things, when you do a large and complex app, but not so useful and too heavy for small apps.

There's one particular weakness in barebones backbone with makes it specifically a bad choice for larger projects - its models aren't hierarchical (i.e. members in a model which are models themselves don't cascade events or JSON serialization - they are treated as plain Java objects by backbone). Qooxdoo's properties system and the built-in JSON serializer don't have this problem. OTOH, there are several backbone plugins addressing specifically this issue.

OTOH, in recent times, qooxdoo has cut out various parts to make it easy to use proper subsets of qooxdoo in smaller web apps/mobile apps, making them available separately. Therefore, learning qooxdoo and building an ecosystem around it is probably the smarter/more economical choice, for an enterprise's intranet development.

Another aspect to consider is popularity. Most web developers have not heard of qooxdoo, given that 1&1 - the backer of qooxdoo development - doesn't invest at all in marketing qooxdoo. So selling qooxdoo to your development team might prove hard, even when it's the smarter technical choice.

user625488
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I write a big qooxdoo application and I am satisfied of the result. Qooxdoo is well suited for that (I don't know many other framework to do that).

It is not very easy to start but qooxdoo's developers offer some great tools to help learning : playground, demo browser, api viewer, inspector, tests browser.... Qooxdoo team is very professionnal and generally answer fast when you post a question here or throught the mailing list.

It's really easy to contribute, they welcome with open arms your contribution.

The main problem of the framework is it popularity. It is unknown for many people. The framework is big and some parts of the code are old and would need more user feedbacks to be improved.

Fortunately, often you just have to create derived class and write/override methods to help you (and send pull request :))

woprandi
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Please find comparison below, as per my understanding :-

Backbone.js:

  • Lightweight library as compare to Qooxdoo.
  • Easy to start (if you know javascript).
  • Many more documentations and examples in the net.

Qooxdoo:

  • Bigger library
  • Not easy to start
  • Less documentations and examples as compare to backbone.js

I had been a Qooxdoo developer. But truth is Backbone.js is better in many concerns. Specially for Small Applications.

Good luck!

Manish Shrivastava
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