Dogfooding: Defining roles in an MVC architecture with internal APIs
Here’s a copy of the talk I did recently at Boston University discussing how to implement a clean MVC architecture for web apps, with a decoupled front end, using an internal API.
Abstract: The architectural design of an application often comes down to a single question: Where is the work done? Traditional client-server applications answer the question unequivocally: On the server. A new class of application, single-page (SPA), has blurred the separation of responsibility by moving data operations closer to the client. This talk discusses an approach that strictly segregates back-end models from front-end SPA views through use of an application-agnostic internal RESTful API, enhancing testability and re-use. While demonstration code will be in Javascript, the approach applies to most client-server application architectures.
