Compare data-lift and data-bind

[Kaiyin Zhong]

The data-lift attribute in Lift and the data-bind attribute in knockout.js seem to have very similar functionality. Could anyone make a comparison?

[Antonio Salazar Cardozo]

Knockout's data-bind describes data binding. It indicates “put this here, put this thing over here”.

You can define custom binders that work differently, and in that usage it's a little more like Lift's

data-lift. data-bind provides data to the binding handlers. Some external entity plugs data into

the Knockout binding structure, and data-bind assigns that data to various properties about the

element it's on.

data-lift describes snippet invocation. Largely, data is managed inside Scala and data-lift is simply

about hooking up the Scala to particular places in the page. Some limited data can be passed

from the data-lift attribute, but it's static data (strings, numbers, etc), not references to variables.

Snippets in turn transform markup. So in a sense Knockout's data-bind has more in common

with Lift's CSS selector transforms than it does with data-lift—but overall it's just a very different

flow.

Thanks,

Antonio