Grails vs Spring

Overview

Spring

Stacks3.9K

Followers4.8K

Votes1.1K

GitHub Stars59.1K

Forks38.8K

Grails

Stacks384

Followers373

Votes333

Grails vs Spring: What are the differences?

Grails: An Open Source, full stack, web application framework for the JVM. Grails is a framework used to build web applications with the Groovy programming language. The core framework is very extensible and there are numerous plugins available that provide easy integration of add-on features; Spring: Provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model for modern Java-based enterprise applications. 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.

Grails and Spring can be categorized as "Frameworks (Full Stack)" tools.

"Groovy" is the top reason why over 44 developers like Grails, while over 192 developers mention "Java" as the leading cause for choosing Spring.

Grails and Spring are both open source tools. Spring with 30.6K GitHub stars and 19.6K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Grails with 2.48K GitHub stars and 945 GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Spring has a broader approval, being mentioned in 319 company stacks & 184 developers stacks; compared to Grails, which is listed in 47 company stacks and 22 developer stacks.

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Advice on Spring, Grails

Tushar

Jan 7, 2021

Needs adviceon

Spring

Spring Boot

Django

Is learning Spring and Spring Boot for web apps back-end development is still relevant in 2021? Feel free to share your views with comparison to Django/Node.js/ ExpressJS or other frameworks.

Please share some good beginner resources to start learning about spring/spring boot framework to build the web apps.

827k views827k

Comments

Ethan

Jan 16, 2023

Needs adviceon

Node.js

Django

Golang

So currently I have experience in Node.js, but just to expand my stack knowledge and for getting backend developer roles, I thought of learning another backend-related language/framework. I have heard about Django, Golang, and Spring. I am mostly trying for backend API roles, and far as I've heard, Django REST framework can be a pain to work with. I've heard there are issues with Golang for package management (like how recently the Gorilla web toolkit is archived) and as for Spring, it's a vast ecosystem to learn so not sure if it's worth investing in. I would like to know which tool/framework to learn, which can help me get high-paying jobs and has a lot of scopes, and also which is great for making REST APIs. Any other tool that can do the job better than these three is also welcome!

51.2k views51.2k

Comments

Anonymous

Dec 15, 2020

Needs adviceon

Spring

Java

Node.js

I am provided with the opportunity to learn one of these technologies during my training. I have prior experience with Spring and found it tough and still haven't figured out when to use what annotations among the thousands of annotations provided. On the other hand, I am very proficient in Java data structures and algorithms (custom comparators, etc.)

I have used Node.js and found it interesting, but I am wondering If I am taking the risk of choosing a framework that has a comparatively lesser scope in the future. One advantage I see with the node.js is the number of tutorials available and the ease with which I can code.

Please recommend which path to take. Is Spring learnable, or should I spend my energy on learning Node.js instead?

290k views290k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Spring	Grails
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.	Grails is a framework used to build web applications with the Groovy programming language. The core framework is very extensible and there are numerous plugins available that provide easy integration of add-on features.
-	FLAT LEARNING CURVE; ON TOP OF SPRING BOOT; SMOOTH JAVA INTEGRATION; REST APIS, REACT, ANGULAR
Statistics
GitHub Stars 59.1K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 38.8K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 3.9K	Stacks 384
Followers 4.8K	Followers 373
Votes 1.1K	Votes 333
Pros & Cons
Pros 230 Java 157 Open source 136 Great community 123 Very powerful 114 Enterprise Cons 15 Draws you into its own ecosystem and bloat 4 Poor documentation 3 Java 3 Verbose configuration 2 Java is more verbose language in compare to python	Pros 56 Groovy 40 Jvm 38 Rapid development 37 Gorm 30 Web framework Cons 3 Frequent breaking changes 2 Undocumented features
Integrations
Java	Sublime Text IntelliJ IDEA Eclipse Java Spring Boot React TextMate AngularJS Groovy

What are some alternatives to Spring, Grails?

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

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 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

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

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

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

Phoenix Framework

Phoenix is a framework for building HTML5 apps, API backends and distributed systems. Written in Elixir, you get beautiful syntax, productive tooling and a fast runtime.

Related Comparisons

"Groovy" is the top reason why over 44 developers like Grails, while over 192 developers mention "Java" as the leading cause for choosing Spring.

Grails vs Spring