[okfn-labs] Architecture for a data-driven web app

Wed Aug 29 10:20:24 UTC 2012

Excerpts from Friedrich Lindenberg's message of 2012-08-29 09:36:40 +0000:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm working on a web app for some read-only data which should be
> browsable on the web. The whole thing has about 10 domain objects,
> which I'm already exposing through a simple, RESTish API. Now I want
> to make a user interface, which I would like to have two properties:
> 
> a) It should be dog-fooding the API
> b) It should be easy to crawl and index for search engines.
> 
> I'm not quite sure how to build this: if I use only browser-based
> templating, Google will not index thing properly and I may not get
> working URLs for entries, even using the HTML5 history stuff.
> 
> This means the cleanest setup seems to be to build another app, using
> API output but generating HTML server-side. I may be able to make a
> nicer UX by using node.js and sharing some template rendering with a
> browser-based app (like GitHub's file browser).
> 
> Is there another way? I'd really like to avoid a full proxy app if
> possible, but can't come up with a good model.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>  - Friedrich
> 

maybe this one could come of use?
http://dodo.github.com/node-dynamictemplate/
"* runs on server and browser side"

not sure if you know dodo? he participates in c3d2 (dresden)

good luck!