Knockout.js Reviews & Product Details

When implementing Model View ViewModel practices, creating applications with Knockout.js was very easy. Much of the code you're writing looks like normal JavaScript objects with some Knockout observable logic dropped in. Knockout gives you the ability to create applications as complex as you want, with data properties as complex as you can imagine, and the data-binding it offers means your data will show up as you want it.

What amazed me was how simple and small some of the changes were when I needed to do something complex. Most code changes were 1-4 lines long, to create some custom feature that would normally be 100 lines of jQuery or Dojo code. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Knockout differs from some more comprehensive frameworks (like Angular or Ember) where everything is included. Knockout provides data-binding, but lacks features found in full frameworks like routing or UI controls. However, you can mix and match other libraries in your app that handle those features, and it integrates very well. You can mix in jQuery UI user controls, or a library like Sammy.js for routing, and let Knockout handle the data binding and keeping up with the state of your application. It depends on how much you want to get your hands dirty with mixing in different libraries.

The one issue I had was that support for more complicated examples and integration with other libraries was hard to find. I'd often find the answer somewhere on StackExchange, or buried in a 5 year old blog that was abandoned 3 years ago. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Knockout is unobtrusive library with focus on data binding. It's very easy to create app with complex UI logic and bind it to UI representation. The best thing about Knockout, it doesn't stand in your way. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

You have to write a lot of ko.observable for complex objects. But still there's a Knockout ES5 plugin that automates observables. The drawback of the plugin that it doesn't support old browsers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Binding dom elements to javascript objects for data driven changes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is a very flexible framework and with power comes great responsibility. It is very easy to start to break best practices because knockoutjs will not force you to do things correctly. This is very powerful, but if you do not hold your developers to a coding standard things can get very muddled and it can lead to problems. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The library does not include more features than it needs and is easy to understand. The documentation on their site is fairly detailed with some good examples. The ability to bind changes to dom elements makes plain jQuery look ancient. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Cretan kinds of errors thrown to the console give little or no information on what the actual issue is. Often times it can be easy just trying to guess around to find the source of an issue. Some of the more advanced and highly useful features are only found on blogs outside of their site. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Knockout.js is a very well-documented, tiny javascript MVVM framework. It is very easy to use and it has many extension points which very good if you have special needs or want to create custom bindings. As it focus only data-binding and templating, it will play nicely with other libraries. One difference with other frameworks is that it has support for browser back to IE6, so it can be a good choice if you have to support legacy browsers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recently knockout.js development seems to slow down quite a bit, and other frameworks with similar purpose such as React, Vue.js or Aurelia are gaining momentum. The legacy browser support can also be seen as a drawback as knockout.js is not taking advantage of new javascript features and has no compatibility with ES6. Components have been introduced on newer versions but that are a little tricky to implement. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I came from a WPF background so I am very excited to see databinding and ease it provides with UI customization, adding and removing css on the fly makes it very robust. I was just discussing with my brother how knockout allows conditional tags to be added to the html which provides considerable flexibility in creating templates for different kinds of form controls and based on customer requirement we can apply custom styling on each control. Moreover, we are also using knockout for data validation which is another neat feature and very critical functionality to our customers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I consider myself as a beginner user right now. I don't have any particular dislikes at the moment. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While it's not the newest framework around, Knockout remains a great choice for developers looking for a non-intrusive data-binding/templating solution in the front end. Unlike Angular and React, Knockout does not attempt to control the structure of your application. Thanks to its wonderfully expressive design, It's easy to hit the ground running and create surprisingly complex components for your application quickly. Custom bindings and elements can be used to do just about anything, and make it easy to integrate with other libraries or frameworks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Knockout does not include a router or HTTP client, so you will need to include some other libraries if you are creating a single-page application. While it is definitely possible to write performant apps with Knockout, it is easy to run into performance issues if you are not aware of some of the more obscure features or if you go overboard with two-way data-binding. For this reason, you might want to use something more comprehensive for large applications. Although it still receives updates, Knockout is ancient in JavaScript time, so you may want to think twice about using this if you intend to stay on the cutting edge. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The main reason I have been using Knockout ever since I learnt about it is because it facilitates the update of data based on user's input and interactivity with a UI on real time. Another feature that I like about the framework, is how it makes working with forms and its value data very easy. Forms are the main way we get input from users so it comes in handy whenever we need to observe or listen to changes on the value of the forms. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is hard to say what I do not like from the framework. But I can tell you a few areas where I wish the framework behave in a different manner. For example, it is frustrating when you have an active ViewModel and you cannot access data that resides inside of the ViewModel anywhere outside it. I know that this might have to do with programming scoping rules but it would be nice to have a way to at least refer to data that resides inside the ViewModel when you are working outside of it. Also, it is frustrating that you cannot debug the code that resides inside the ViewModel when debugging with Google Chrome Tools. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

In the beginning of this decade it was a pioneering library that opened the road for other ones, like Angularjs. Its good point is that it doesn't claim to solve all the tasks needed to build a complex Javascript app but tries to solve mainly a problem: binding data from javascript structures to HTML elements and viceversa, what is called "two way binding". This really was a big selling point, because it makes really easy to drive HTML/DOM and interact with it, but as we will see, it can also be a double edged sword. Still, if you need this kind of binding and don't want to"buy" a big framework like Angular.js, this could be a good choice. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

"Two way binding". It work wonders and makes magic things possible, but with power comes responsibilities (and troubles). I've seen projects where it was abused to the point where it was needed to open the magic box and mess with the internals to accomplish otherwise simple tasks. So beware to use with caution and strictly following the intended use, philosophy and idioms. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The best of Knockout is its simplicity and the fact that it doesn't try to do a lot of things like other client side frameworks like Angular, Ember, or Backbone - it only has a very small and focused set of features around "observables" which provides you with a very easy to use MVVM architecture for your app. The backward compatibility is also very good, even old browsers like IE6 Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It has not been actively maintained / improved in the last couple of months, looks like the creator, Steve Sanderson is not working anymore on it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.