Building a calendar application with JavaScript MVC

23 Sep 2023

calendar

In today’s tech-driven world, JavaScript has become the go-to programming language for building interactive and dynamic web applications. One popular use case for JavaScript is creating a calendar application that allows users to schedule and manage their events seamlessly. In this blog post, we will explore how to build a JavaScript Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern-based calendar application.

What is the MVC Pattern?

The MVC pattern is a software architectural design that separates the application into three interconnected components: the Model, the View, and the Controller.

The Model represents the data and business logic of the application.
The View is responsible for rendering the user interface.
The Controller handles user interactions and updates the model and view accordingly.

This pattern promotes the separation of concerns, making the code more maintainable and scalable.

Setting up the Project

To start building our calendar application, we need to set up the project structure and install any necessary dependencies. Create a project directory and run the following commands:

mkdir calendar-app
cd calendar-app
npm init

Once the npm init command is executed, follow the prompts to create a package.json file. Next, let’s install some dependencies:

npm install express --save
npm install ejs --save

Creating the Model

The first step is to define the data structure for our calendar events. In the models/Event.js file, we can create a simple Event class:

class Event {
  constructor(title, description, date) {
    this.title = title;
    this.description = description;
    this.date = date;
  }
}

Implementing the View

For the view component of our calendar application, we will use the EJS (Embedded JavaScript) templating engine. EJS allows us to dynamically generate HTML content based on our data.

Create a views folder and a views/home.ejs file. In the home.ejs, we can define the basic structure of our calendar view:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>Calendar App</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/style.css">
</head>
<body>
  <h1>My Calendar</h1>
  <!-- Calendar content will be generated dynamically -->
</body>
</html>

Developing the Controller

The controller component is responsible for handling user interactions and updating the model and view accordingly. Create a controllers/homeController.js file and implement the following code:

const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();
const Event = require('../models/Event');

// Example route for displaying the calendar
router.get('/', (req, res) => {
  const events = []; // Fetch events from the model or a database
  res.render('home', { events }); // Pass the events data to the view
});

module.exports = router;

Setting Up the Server

To run our calendar application, we need to set up a server to handle HTTP requests. Create an app.js file and add the following code:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const homeController = require('./controllers/homeController');

app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
app.use('/css', express.static(__dirname + '/public/css'));
app.use('/', homeController);

const PORT = process.env.PORT || 3000;
app.listen(PORT, () => {
  console.log(`Server running on port ${PORT}`);
});

Running the Application

To start our calendar application, run the following command:

node app.js

Visit http://localhost:3000 in your browser, and you should see the calendar view. At this point, the events are hardcoded, but you can easily modify the code to fetch events from a database or API.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we explored how to build a calendar application using the JavaScript MVC pattern. By following the separation of concerns provided by the MVC architecture, we can create a scalable and maintainable application. Remember to add your own features and styling to make your calendar application truly unique.

#javascript #MVC #calendar #webdevelopment