Ember.js

Ember.js is an open-source JavaScript web framework that utilizes a component-service pattern. It is designed to allow developers to create scalable single-page web applications by incorporating common idioms, best practices, and patterns from other single-page-app ecosystem patterns into the framework.
Ember is used on many websites including HashiCorp, DigitalOcean, Apple Music, Square, Inc., Intercom, Discourse, Groupon, LinkedIn, Live Nation, Ghost, Nordstrom, and Twitch. Although primarily considered a framework for the web, it is also possible to build desktop and mobile applications with Ember when utilizing a hybrid app pattern. The most notable example of an Ember desktop application is Apple Music, a feature of the iTunes desktop application.
The Ember trademark is owned by Tilde Inc.
In December 2011, the SproutCore 2.0 framework was renamed to Ember.js, to reduce confusion between the application framework and the widget library of SproutCore 1.0. The framework was created by Yehuda Katz, a member of the jQuery, Ruby on Rails and SproutCore core teams.
According to the company, Ember was designed around four key ideas:
Like Ruby on Rails, Ember follows convention over configuration (CoC), and the don't repeat yourself (DRY) principle. It has been described as a highly opinionated framework built to be very flexible.
According to the company, Ember consists of five key concepts:
Ember.js is one component of a complete front-end stack built and supported by the Ember core team.
Ember-CLI aims to bring convention over configuration to build tools. A command line utility based on broccoli, running the command ember new <app-name> generates a new Ember app with the default stack. This provides:
Other features include:
Most Ember applications use Ember Data, a data-persistence library providing many of the facilities of object-relational mapping (ORM). However it is also possible to use Ember without Ember Data.
Ember Data maps client-side models to server-side data. It can then load and save records and their relationships without any configuration via a RESTful JSON API that implements the JSON API specification, provided certain conventions are followed. However it is also configurable and can work with servers through the use of adapters and addons. JSON API has server library implementations for PHP, Node.js, Ruby, Python, Go, .NET and Java. Connecting to a Java-Spring-based server is also documented.
The first stable version of Ember Data (labeled 1.13 to align with Ember itself) was released on June 18 June 2015.
The Ember Inspector is an extension currently available for the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers for debugging Ember applications. Features include the ability to see which templates, components, and views are currently rendered, see the properties of any Ember object with a UI that computes bindings and computed properties, and access one's application's objects from the console. If Ember Data is used, one can also see the records loaded for each model.
Fastboot is an Ember CLI add-on created by the Ember core team that gives Ember developers the ability to run their apps in Node.js. This feature allows end users to see HTML and CSS right away, with JavaScript downloading in the background and taking over once it has fully loaded.
Liquid Fire provides animation support for Ember applications. Features include animated transitions between routes and between models within a single route. It provides a DSL for solidifying spatial route relationships, cleanly separated from view-layer implementation details. An example would be to animate a screen transition so that the new screen appears to slide in from one edge of the browser.
See the releases blog for the full list of releases and detailed changelog.
Ember follows a six-week release cycle, inspired by the rapid release cycle of Google Chrome.
Starting with Ember 2.0, related projects supported by the core team have their releases coordinated, and share a version number with Ember itself.
Ember follows the semantic versioning convention. In particular, breaking changes are only introduced at significant version numbers, such as 1.0, 2.0, etc. While new features can be added at point releases (1.1, 1.2...), and features deprecated, no breaking changes to the public APIs are introduced. Tooling was also under development in 2015 to help streamline the upgrade process.
In addition to this process, several steps were taken to mitigate issues around upgrading to the 2.0 release:
The process follows the core Ember principle of Stability without Stagnation and is in marked contrast to the upgrade plans of similar projects such as AngularJS.
Project status can be tracked via the core team meeting minutes. However, major changes to Ember go through the Request For Comment process. This gives the Ember community a chance to give feedback on new proposals. Notable RFCs include:
Unlike other projects such as AngularJS (Google) and React (Facebook) which have the backing of one main company, Ember.js has a variety of sponsors and backers. These include users of the framework such as Yahoo!, LinkedIn and Bustle.