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This is quite a debate we have at the moment between colleagues and I'm looking for fresh news ideas or suggestions. Where better than StackOverflow to ask!

We have web developers and back-end developers (PHP for Drupal or JSP for other platforms) and we used to develop a working static HTML/CSS/JS prototype and handed it to back-end developers to integrate.

However, we end up having issues where they have to split the static prototype to fit their different JSP/PHP pages and some bugs surfaces. We then have to double check their integration and squash the bugs.

I'm wondering if there's a way to create, deconstruct the static prototype to be easier to integrate for back-end developers? Maybe a way to split files and use SHTML includes to map the back-end? I'm just throwing ideas...

What do you think?

Vallieres
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The terms web developer and backend developer are not clearly defined. This is partly due, in my opinion, to the templating technologies used (PHP, JSP, etc.) which encourage this problem. We talk of front-end and back-end developers but don't consider front-end and back-end applications.

I'm wondering if there's a way to create, deconstruct the static prototype to be easier to integrate for back-end developers?

Why?

I think the better solution is to have back-end developers be just that, back-end developers. Why are you giving a presentation template to a back-end developer (I know, it's because you're using a templating technology such as PHP, JSP, etc.)?

If you really want to fix this problem you've got to separate these rolls by ditching the templating technologies and adopt a RESTful approach. Allow your back-end developers to only develop server-side code. Allow your front-end developers to only develop client-side code. Let the user interface designers provide a static prototype to the client developer who will make rest api calls to get the data needed to populate the static prototype. Then the back-end developer won't ever have to touch a piece of the client-side presentation.

Doing this will allow you to have multiple clients (web, mobile, etc.) using the same RESTful services.

See this SO Question/Answer for more on RESTful web services.

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axiopisty
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  • This is great! I did not thought of pushing the RESTful functionnality like that. In some projects we have web integrators that are handling the UX/UI with their static HTML prototypes and a back-end developer that will do all the templating and incorporate the static prototype in the project. Ideally we should have an intermediate position that knows both. With RESTful approach it seems to solve the problem we have. I will review the documentation provided and see if we can apply it to a simpler project to road test it. Thank you very much! – Vallieres Jan 23 '14 at 18:39
  • You might want to look at AngularJS – axiopisty Jan 23 '14 at 20:57