My JavaScript patterns/practices stink. Where shou

Question

I've been working almost exclusively on back-end tasks for the past few years, and I've just noticed that most JavaScript (and CoffeeScript) projects have got a helluva lot prettier in my absence.

I work primarily in a rails environment, and almost all my JavaScript/jQuery used to look like this:

$(an_element).an_event(function() {
  stuff_i_want_to_do;
})

$(another_element).some_other_event(function() {
  some_other_stuff_i_want_to_do;
})

Callbacks aside, that's pretty much been it.

Anyhow, was just browsing through some other folks' code and noticed many javascripters have been getting a lot prettier in my absence. This isn't complex, but it's typical of the newer/better approach to JavaScript I've been seeing:

jQuery -> 
  if $('#products').length
    new ProductsPager()

class ProductsPager
  constructor: (@page = 1) ->
    $(window).scroll(@check)

  check: =>
    if @nearBottom()
      @page++
      $(window).unbind('scroll', @check)
      $.getJSON($('#products').data('json-url'), page: @page, @render)
#

  nearBottom: =>
    $(window).scrollTop() > $(document).height() - $(window).height() - 50

  render: (products) =>
    for product in products
      $('#products').append Mustache.to_html($('#product_template').html(), product)
    $(window).scroll(@check) if products.length > 0

I've been looking for resources on modern best practices/patterns for JavaScript (and/or CoffeeScript), but I haven't had much luck. So in short, where should I look to be brought up to speed re: best javascript/coffeescript modern patterns & practices?

Answer 1

If you need to play with a complete implementation of a large scale javascript reference architecture, have a look at:

http://boilerplatejs.org

It is a collection of patterns and integration of some good libraries with readymade sample application to start with. I wrote it to share my experience after working on couple of large JS projects.