Recently I ran into a task that I had encountered less than a year ago with another client. In both cases the client was using Bootstrap CSS for their grid layout, but didn’t have much need for the Bootstrap JavaScript bits. After a while the need for type ahead functionality arose, so the first time around we agreed to include the Bootstrap JavaScript so we could use the Bootstrap Typeahead plugin.

However having to include jQuery, Bootstrap JavaScript and a plugin, which still required me to make some tweeks to work properly, didn’t sit well with me. So the second time around I opted to implement type ahead on my own. More...

The next pattern I want to take a look at, that is fundamental to how many JavaScript applications are structured, is the Controller pattern.

There are different definitions for what a Controller is on the client, depending on what framework people are used to working with. As you may know I often recommend not using a framework, but I go with the definition that a controller encapsulates the UI logic for a part of a web page. A common practice is to have controllers take the html element that it works on as the first constructor argument, followed by dependencies (services and other controllers) and possibly an options object. This will resemble what you are likely doing if you are writing eg. an MVC application in ASP.NET MVC or WebAPI. In much the same way, this allows you to pass in dependencies, and keep the controller free of hardcoded dependencies.

I have been working with TypeScript for quite a while now, and I really enjoy how the strong typing enables better tooling, as well as more understandable code, where the patterns of old look more like themselves, than they do in plain JavaScript. With the adoptation that TypeScript has seen in the last couple of years, I think it is safe to say that it is a good bet going forward, so if you are not already on board I highly recommend it. I will bet your time is better spent with languages and patterns, than they are learning the framework flavour of the day – although they do in themselves provide inspiration for patterns.

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