Lazojs is a client-server web framework built on Node.js that allows front-end developers to easily create a 100% SEO compliant, component MVC structured web application with an optimized first page load using a familiar tool stack comprised of Backbone.js, RequireJS, and jQuery.

Have a question? Want to keep up-to-date on changes and releases? Post questions to the LazoJS Google Group and follow @lazojs on Twitter.

Looking for documentation? Check out our wiki.

The single page application (SPA) model is an excellent approach for separating application logic from data retrieval; consolidating UI code to a single language and run time; and delegating rendering to browsers. However, the SPA model fails to adequately address SEO concerns and time to first page render making it a major concern for any public facing website. As such, developers rely on work-arounds such as the hashbang hack or running the DOM on the server so they can realize the benefits of the SPA model and address SEO concerns. These work-arounds, however, have significant performance and maintenance drawbacks.

Lazo was created by WalmartLabs to address these issues and provide front-end engineers with a familiar environment for creating web applications. Pages are constructed via reusable, nestable components that have their own life cycles allowing developers to easily create complex views while providing excellent encapsulation and separation of concerns. These pages are mapped to fully qualified, SEO compliant URIs. Lazo renders the first page load on the server via a rendering engine that uses string concatenation. Subsequent page requests are rendered by browsers that support HTML5's pushstate capability. For those browsers that do not support pushstate, Lazo falls back to rendering views on the server. This approach allows developers to reap the SEO benefits of the traditional web application model, while still working in a context with which they are familiar, and realizing all SPA model benefits without coding for them.

Learn More

Lazo is a node module. Installing and creating a new Lazo application is as easy as uno, dos, tres.

To install Lazo execute the following command:

npm install -g --production lazo

Next clone Lazo TodoMVC example:

git clone [email protected]:lazojs/lazo-todomvc.git

Install dependencies (from local lazo-todomvc repo):

npm install

Finally start the new application (from local lazo-todomvc repo):

npm start

You are done.

Open http://localhost:8080 in a browser to verify that the application is running.