Ember.js and Meteor

[Flavien Volken]

I've few questions concerning ember.js and meteor.

Ember is a recent framework based on the Sproutcore technology, very efficient, smart and quite similar to what Meteor is going to achieve in their development.

What does ember.js currently lacks is an efficient client-server communication layer as Meteor is already supporting.

So… now I'm just wondering about the current situation:

1. Are ember.js and meteor complementary ?

2. Is meteor trying to override / compete with ember.js and will it provide similar apis at last ?

3. Would not it be a beautiful approach to develop meteor as a powerful tool able to sync with thousands of clients through an "all json technology" which technology would then be usable by several other frameworks (including ember.js) ?

ok I've seen someone mixing both meteor and ember.js and it seems to work, I just wonder if you should not consider relying on their (ember) technology for most of the controller-view part and focus on the data-controller.

In my opinion both you and ember frameworks are excellent framework and both of you are covering the same technologies and willing to evolve. Ember will at a time add database support as you do.

As I see, it might be the right time to consider merging both technologies and avoid developing twice almost the same tools. That could be a great synergy for both the framework devs and the users of your technologies.

What are your opinions about this ?

[Norganna's AddOns]

As a user of both ember and meteor, let me give you my insight.

Ember uses handlebars templates the same as Meteor.

Ember's MVC framework is analogous to the Minimongo (model/data), Handlebars (view) and Template (controller) used by Meteor. Sure you could add Ember in, buy dear lord, why? It's slow, painful, disjointed and seriously no match for what Meteor already provides cohesively.

What's already there does the job quite simply and elegantly.

I understand that some people may actually want to do this, which is fine, but please don't talk about replacing the current implementation with an ember-like implementation. Such a frankensteinian monstrosity would certainly drive me away.

[Flavien Volken]

your position is interesting, as I understand you bypass all the ember part in your projects ? Are not you stuck sometimes with some features which are not as mature in meteor ?

[Norganna's AddOns]

No, I don't bypass the ember parts.

Ember basically consists of a client-side model (of which it's you're responsibility as a programmer to populate and keep up to date), the templating engine, or view (handlebars) and the controller classes which are used by the views to format and interact with the models.

In Meteor, there's the client/server automatically synchronised data models (the minimongo objects), the templating engine (handlebars) and the controller (the Template class, which has both helper methods to convert data from the models and .event mappings to interact with the user).

Ember and Meteor are essentially the same. Saying "I want to use Ember in Meteor" is like saying, "I want to drive a Mazda in my Porche".

[Flavien Volken]

No, I don't bypass the ember parts.

Your answer confuse me a bit, in short is that common to mix both framework in the same project ?

if Yes: Is that because Meteor is not mature enough on some points or that they are not made for the same purpose ?

if No: Is that because it is too messy to mix them or because Meteor covers already most of the developers needs ?

[Norganna's AddOns]

Yeah, I think I'm confusing you.

I use ember in one project I have (which I wrote before meteor) running in node.js on backend and ember on frontend.

I also (but separately) have another project which uses just meteor. It does not contain ember at all.

[Ofer Nave]

What about Ember's router?

I love what I've seen of Meteor so far, but I haven't seen anything about URL generation, maintenance, and routing.  Maybe I just didn't notice it in the docs Table of Contents?  I don't think it's been mentioned even briefly in any of intro screencasts I've seen.

This is one of the most core and signature pieces of Ember.js, and a great idea -- it's a part of the Ember philosophy that they definitely got right:  Web Apps are about URLs.

-ofer

[Ken Yee]

On Wednesday, May 1, 2013 10:51:25 AM UTC-4, Ofer Nave wrote:

I love what I've seen of Meteor so far, but I haven't seen anything about URL generation, maintenance, and routing.  Maybe I just didn't notice it in the docs Table of Contents?  I don't think it's been mentioned even briefly in any of intro screencasts I've

Ofer:
Look at Chris' mini-pages package.
  https://github.com/cmather/meteor-mini-pages

I found it essential to doing any sort of "multi-page" app.

[Ofer Nave]

Thanks for the link!  I see it's available through the atmosphere repo, which is nice:

https://atmosphere.meteor.com/package/mini-pages

Will check it out.

One nit-pick, though -- any app of note is a "multi-page" app, or rather, all apps but the most trivial (which typically only exist in tutorials) should be multi-URL apps, with the URL being the mechanism of addressing a particular state within the app.

I wish someone had already uploaded video of the Boston Ember.js meetup last week where Tom and Yehuda visited and gave a talk, because Yehuda's intro perfectly communicated this concept, better than I can.

-ofer

[Ken Yee]

On Wednesday, May 1, 2013 2:55:06 PM UTC-4, Ofer Nave wrote:

One nit-pick, though -- any app of note is a "multi-page" app, or rather, all apps but the most trivial (which typically only exist in tutorials) should be multi-URL apps, with the URL being the mechanism of addressing a particular state within the app.

Yep.  That was my conclusion in my blog post about learning Meteor as well.  It's worth a read if you're new to Meteor:
  http://www.keysolutions.com/blogs/kenyee.nsf/d6plinks/KKYE-94VUVQ

 

[Abigail Watson]

Thank you for this post!
I've been thinking exactly the same thing myself.  And it doesn't just go for Ember.  It's the exact same for all the discussions around Angular and Knockout as well.  

This is something that's not being understood by new users, and needs to be communicated in the FAQs more!  If you don't mind, I'm going to use that quote.  :)

-a

On Monday, September 10, 2012 3:17:04 AM UTC-4, Norganna's AddOns wrote: