Every web application contains data. In the beginning of the Web era, data, structure, and formatting were sent in one package from the server to the browser, as you all know. Then, CSS came along to separate formatting from data and structure. To separate structure and data, more is needed: still most web applications prepare the whole web page on the server and fill tables, select boxes, or other widgets that contain dynamic data, by weaving structure and data together.
Data binding makes the next step possible—the separation of structure and content.
Data binding is an interaction between a dataSource
and a dataObserver
. A dataSource
only knows about data and how to retrieve it from a server. A dataObserver
knows how to access the data presented by the dataSource
and it maps the data retrieved onto elements that can be displayed in a browser.
If the data content is not put within HTML elements, it must be made available separately to the client web application...