In many projects I needed the functionality of a router. Adding backbone just for the router seems heavy for me beacause heavily coupled with Underscore.js. But then I found exoskeleton.
Exoskeleton is a faster and leaner Backbone for your HTML5 apps. It’s not coupled with any external libraries and you can make a custom build with modules you only need. There are other routers available for javascript but I prefer this because I already know its api.
Custom build of Backbone Router
Creating a custom build with exoskeleton is easy. Clone exoskeleton from github.
git clone git@github.com:paulmillr/exoskeleton.git
Now in the lib
directory there will be the individual modules without any dependencies. In those files header
and footer
are some common files you require in most builds.
Since I need only router
with event capabilities, this is what my custom build look like.
cat lib/{header,utils,events,history,router,footer}.js > exoskeleton.js
Then minify using make if needed. Its uses uglifyjs for minification.
make min
Now I have the independent Backbone.Router
which I can use with any other javascript framework.