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  1. Stackups
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  4. Frameworks
  5. API Platform vs Next.js

API Platform vs Next.js

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Next.js
Next.js
Stacks8.0K
Followers5.1K
Votes330
GitHub Stars135.4K
Forks29.7K
API Platform
API Platform
Stacks85
Followers128
Votes8

API Platform vs Next.js: What are the differences?

<API Platform and Next.js are two popular technologies used for building web applications. API Platform is a full-stack framework for building API-centric applications, while Next.js is a JavaScript framework for building server-rendered React applications. Here is a comparison of key differences between API Platform and Next.js.>

  1. Architecture: API Platform is a backend framework that focuses on building APIs using popular tools like Symfony and Doctrine ORM, making it suitable for building robust APIs. In contrast, Next.js is primarily a frontend framework that focuses on server-side rendering of React applications, enabling fast and dynamic user experiences.

  2. Server-Side Rendering: Next.js provides built-in support for server-side rendering, allowing developers to render React components on the server before sending them to the client. This helps improve initial loading times and SEO optimization. API Platform, on the other hand, is more focused on providing robust backend APIs and may not offer out-of-the-box support for server-side rendering.

  3. Data Management: API Platform offers features like automatic ORM mapping, serialization, validation, and documentation generation, making it easier to work with data models in APIs. In comparison, Next.js may require additional libraries or custom solutions to manage data fetching, state management, and API integrations in React applications.

  4. Client-Side Routing: Next.js provides client-side routing capabilities, allowing developers to create dynamic and interactive user interfaces with seamless page transitions. This can be beneficial for building single-page applications and enhancing user experience. API Platform, being primarily a backend framework, may not provide built-in support for client-side routing in the same way as Next.js.

  5. Deployment and Scalability: API Platform applications are typically deployed as traditional web services or microservices using containerization technologies like Docker. In contrast, Next.js applications can be easily deployed as static sites, server-rendered apps, or serverless functions, with support for scaling on platforms like Vercel and AWS Amplify.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Both API Platform and Next.js have active communities and ecosystems, with a wide range of plugins, extensions, and resources available for developers. However, API Platform's ecosystem may be more focused on backend development tools and practices, while Next.js' ecosystem caters more towards frontend development and React-specific libraries.

In Summary, API Platform is ideal for building API-centric applications with a strong focus on backend development, while Next.js is well-suited for building dynamic and interactive React applications with server-side rendering capabilities and client-side routing.

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Advice on Next.js, API Platform

Taylor
Taylor

May 5, 2020

Review

Hey guys,

My backend set up is Prisma / GraphQL-Yoga at the moment, and I love it. It's so intuitive to learn and is really neat on the frontend too, however, there were a few gotchas when I was learning! Especially around understanding how it all pieces together (the stack). There isn't a great deal of information out there on exactly how to put into production my set up, which is a backend set up on a Digital Ocean droplet with Prisma/GraphQL Yoga in a Docker Container using Next & Apollo Client on the frontend somewhere else. It's such a niche subject, so I bet only a few hundred people have got a website with this stack in production. Anyway, I wrote a blog post to help those who might need help understanding it. Here it is, hope it helps!

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Next.js
Next.js
API Platform
API Platform

Next.js is a minimalistic framework for server-rendered React applications.

It is a set of tools to build and consume web APIs. You can build a fully-featured hypermedia or GraphQL API in minutes. Leverage its awesome features to develop complex and high performance API-first projects. Extend or override everything you want.

Zero setup. Use the filesystem as an API; Only JavaScript. Everything is a function; Automatic server rendering and code splitting; Data fetching is up to the developer; Anticipation is the key to performance; Simple deployment
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
135.4K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
29.7K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
8.0K
Stacks
85
Followers
5.1K
Followers
128
Votes
330
Votes
8
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 51
    Automatic server rendering and code splitting
  • 44
    Built with React
  • 34
    Easy setup
  • 26
    TypeScript
  • 24
    Universal JavaScript
Cons
  • 9
    Structure is weak compared to Angular(2+)
Pros
  • 1
    Headless
  • 1
    Composer
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Automated api-docs
  • 1
    Restful
Cons
  • 2
    Easy only for easy task like normal crud on entity
Integrations
React
React
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Next.js, API Platform?

Node.js

Node.js

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Rails

Rails

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Django

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Laravel

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

.NET

.NET

.NET is a general purpose development platform. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build native applications for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and more.

ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Core

A free and open-source web framework, and higher performance than ASP.NET, developed by Microsoft and the community. It is a modular framework that runs on both the full .NET Framework, on Windows, and the cross-platform .NET Core.

Symfony

Symfony

It is written with speed and flexibility in mind. It allows developers to build better and easy to maintain websites with PHP..

Spring

Spring

A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.

Spring Boot

Spring Boot

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you can "just run". We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.

Android SDK

Android SDK

Android provides a rich application framework that allows you to build innovative apps and games for mobile devices in a Java language environment.

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