Comment by jashkenas

Yes, absolutely pass models directly to your views. That's what they're for, after all -- keeping together a handy bunch of methods that can display your data in ways that are terrifically useful for a view to show:

    account.statusWarning()

    document.listOfCollaborators()

    photo.similar.first().publicUrl()

... and so on. But by all means, don't use Handlebars to do it. Use a templating engine that allows real logic, and rest easier at night. Handlebars is set up as faux-logicless templating -- A wolf in Mustache.js' clothing. Having to add Handlebars helpers just to be allowed to call a "method" (as shown in the blog post) is pretty silly example of forced indirection, no? Much more straightforward with embedded JavaScript:

    {{ model.getFullName() }}