# RedditJS rebuilt the Reddit web client on Backbone and Marionette > RedditJS is a third-party reimplementation of the Reddit web interface written in Backbone and Marionette with RequireJS and Handlebars on the front end and an Express and Passport server behind it. It adds a client-side data cache, embed widgets for other sites, and is now known as js4.red. **BenjaminAdams/RedditJS** — Reddit built with Backbone.js - Repository: https://github.com/BenjaminAdams/RedditJS - Stars: 535 · Forks: 49 - Language: JavaScript - License: BSD-3-Clause - Published: 2026-10-22 · Updated: 2026-10-22 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/benjaminadams-redditjs ## What the project is, and what it became The repository description is Reddit built with Backbone.js, and the README opens with two facts that reframe everything else. The first is that RedditJS uses spa-seo-renderer so search engines can crawl this single page app, which is the tell that this is a JavaScript client rather than a set of server-rendered pages. The second is that RedditJS is now known as js4.red, with the code that powered it described as the code behind that site, which appears to have been removed. So this is an archived-in-spirit project that is still open on GitHub. The README also explains the origin in the first person. The author rewrote reddit from the ground up using the javascript framework Backbone and the reddit API, and states that he believes this created a better user experience as well as additional features, with updates followed at the subreddit /r/redditjs. The licence is BSD-3-Clause and the last push to the repository was on 2026-05-18, with no GitHub releases. ## The feature list, most of which is caching The README's feature list reads like a product spec, and one item explains the rest. The Data Cache means you only have to load up a subreddit once. Once the subreddit is loaded, it pulls the subreddit or single post from memory, and the stated benefit is for both Reddit's server and you, since you only fetch once. Unique Views lets you view an entire subreddit in a new way, with thumbnails only, full images, and a large grid mode. Then there is Do everything, meaning you can normally do on Reddit, almost everything: vote, save and hide posts, and comment, mail and search without refreshing the browser. The Bottom Bar shows all the posts from a subreddit on single post views, caching it for later use if not already in memory, and when not active it stays at only 20 percent visibility so you can hardly tell it is there. The Subreddit Explorer turns the top left subreddit dropdown into a list based on category, with about 1,000 subreddits listed. The rest are smaller: Custom CSS so a subreddit's own CSS and flair are used, Comment Links that expand images and YouTube videos fullsize on hover, Permalink Comments that show a linked comment first plus the rest of the thread, keyboard navigation with the left and right arrow keys, Download Images that compresses images into a zip entirely on the client side, and a Subreddit Slideshow. ## The stack and the build tooling The README lists what RedditJS is built with, and it records a particular moment in front-end development. The stack listed: Node, Backbone, Marionette, lodash, RequireJS, Handlebars and the Reddit API, hosted at Digital Ocean. The repository layout matches a RequireJS project rather than a bundled modern build. There is a Gruntfile.js at the root, a public directory, a server directory, a test directory, a package.json and package-lock.json, and a timestamp.json file. The devDependencies are grunt with grunt-contrib-jshint and grunt-contrib-requirejs, jshint, nodemon and uglify-js, which tells you the workflow: RequireJS modules assembled and minified through Grunt, with JSHint as the linter. The package.json declares the entry point as./server/server and the keywords are Marionette.js, Backbone.js, Require.js and Reddit, so the server is the main entry and the client is a set of AMD modules loaded through RequireJS. ## The Express server, session handling and Reddit authentication The server side of package.json tells you more about how the app talks to Reddit. The Express 4 stack sits behind passport and passport-reddit, which is the Reddit OAuth strategy, so sign-in goes through Reddit's own account system rather than a local password store. Session handling uses express-session with cookie-session and cookie-parser, and connect-mongo with redis in the dependency list suggests a choice between Mongo-backed and Redis-backed session storage, or a cache layer in front of Reddit responses. There is also request for outbound HTTP, body-parser and raw-body for request bodies, method-override so the client can issue PUT and DELETE over POST, multiparty for uploads, compression for gzip responses, serve-static and serve-favicon for asset delivery, jade as the view template engine, bytes and qs for parsing, errorhandler for the error page, and async for control flow. The engines field is the detail worth noticing. It pins node at 0.11.14 and npm at 2.0.0, which dates this dependency set to 2015. ## The embed widgets, and how a third-party site uses them The part of the project that outlives the app itself is the embeddable widgets. The README describes a post embed widget that you add to any website with a script tag, and the widget embeds itself onto your Wordpress post and detects if it has been posted to reddit. If it has not been posted, it shows a link to encourage the user to submit, and if it has been posted it loads a widget displaying that reddit post, giving the user somewhere to upvote and comment. The example with options shows the whole configuration surface in one tag. ```js