Spring Boot vs NestJS

Overview

Spring Boot

Stacks26.7K

Followers24.3K

Votes1.0K

GitHub Stars78.9K

Forks41.6K

NestJS

Stacks2.7K

Followers3.0K

Votes326

GitHub Stars73.3K

Forks8.1K

NestJS vs Spring Boot: What are the differences?

NestJS and Spring Boot are frameworks, used for building scalable and efficient web applications. NestJS is a TypeScript-based framework inspired by Angular, while Spring Boot is a Java-based framework built on top of the Spring framework. Let's explore their key differences:

Language and Ecosystem: NestJS leverages the extensive JavaScript ecosystem and benefits from features like strong typing, decorators, and modern JavaScript syntax. Spring Boot, on the other hand, is a widely adopted programming language with a vast ecosystem of libraries, frameworks, and tools. It integrates seamlessly with the Java ecosystem and benefits from mature tooling and community support.
Architecture: NestJS follows a modular architecture pattern inspired by Angular, allowing developers to organize their applications into reusable modules. It promotes the use of decorators and dependency injection to create scalable and maintainable applications. Spring Boot follows the layered architecture pattern and promotes the use of Inversion of Control (IoC) and Dependency Injection (DI) principles. It provides a rich set of features for building enterprise-grade applications, such as transaction management, security, and data access.
Framework Features: NestJS provides a built-in set of features, such as routing, middleware support, exception handling, and dependency injection. It also offers support for GraphQL, WebSockets, and microservices architecture through various modules and libraries. Spring Boot offers a comprehensive set of features for web development, including routing, request handling, database access, security, caching, and more. It provides robust support for building RESTful APIs and integrating with various technologies like messaging queues, databases, and caching solutions.
Community and Documentation: NestJS has a growing community and an active developer ecosystem. It benefits from the knowledge and resources available in the larger JavaScript and TypeScript community. The official NestJS documentation is well-structured and provides detailed explanations along with practical examples. Spring Boot has a mature and extensive community, with a wealth of resources and community-driven libraries available. It benefits from the vast knowledge base of the Spring framework and Java ecosystem. The Spring Boot documentation is comprehensive and provides detailed guidance on various topics.
Performance: NestJS leverages the performance benefits of Node.js and TypeScript, making it a suitable choice for high-performance applications that require real-time communication or handling a large number of concurrent requests. Spring Boot, being based on Java, offers robust performance and scalability. It benefits from the mature Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and optimized runtime environment, making it well-suited for enterprise-level applications with high traffic loads.

In summary, NestJS offers a modular and scalable architecture inspired by Angular, making it suitable for creating robust and maintainable backend systems. On the other hand, Spring Boot, based on Java, provides a comprehensive ecosystem and extensive libraries, enabling rapid development and deployment of enterprise-grade applications.

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Advice on Spring Boot, NestJS

juan9222

Jul 25, 2020

Needs advice

Hi there, I'm deciding the technology to use in my project.

I need to build software that has:

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Main View (access to a user account, News, General Info, Business hours, software, and parts section).
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Web Shop for Parts (Support, Download Sections, Ticket System).

The most critical functionality is a WebSocket that connects between a car that sends real-time data through serial communication, and a server performs diagnosis on the car and sends the results back to the user.

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Comments

Eva

Fullstack developer

Jul 28, 2020

Needs adviceon

Java

Spring Boot

JavaScript

Hello, I am a fullstack web developer. I have been working for a company with Java/ Spring Boot and client-side JavaScript(mainly jQuery, some AngularJS) for the past 4 years. As I wish to now work as a freelancer, I am faced with a dilemma: which stack to choose given my current knowledge and the state of the market?

I've heard PHP is very popular in the freelance world. I don't know PHP. However, I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to learn since it has many similarities with Java (OOP). It seems to me that Laravel has similarities with Spring Boot (it's MVC and OOP). Also, people say Laravel works well with Vue.js, which is my favorite JS framework.

On the other hand, I already know the Javascript language, and I like Vue.js, so I figure I could go the fullstack Javascript route with ExpressJS. However, I am not sure if these techs are ripe for freelancing (with regards to RAD, stability, reliability, security, costs, etc.) Is it true that Express is almost always used with MongoDB? Because my experience is mostly with SQL databases.

The projects I would like to work on are custom web applications/websites for small businesses. I have developed custom ERPs before and found that Java was a good fit, except for it taking a long time to develop. I cannot make a choice, and I am constantly switching between trying PHP and Node.js/Express. Any real-world advice would be welcome! I would love to find a stack that I enjoy while doing meaningful freelance coding.

826k views826k

Comments

Louai

Full Stack Web Developer

May 15, 2020

Needs adviceon

Node.js

TypeScript

ExpressJS

I'm planning with a small team to create an application which is a platform for restaurants. I'm on the backend almost alone currently. I'm going to use Node.js for that, and I'm very fond of TypeScript, and I worked before mostly with ExpressJS. The team may get bigger as the application becomes bigger and more successful, so I have the Scalability concern in mind now, and I was considering these options:

Use Node+Express+Typescript
Use Node+NestJs (which utilizes Typescript by default)

Option 2 is enticing to me because recently I came to love NestJS and it provides more scalability for the project and uses Typescript in the best way and uses Express under the hood. Also I come from an Angular 2 background, which I think is the best frontend framework (my opinion, and I know React quite well), which makes Nest feel familiar to me because of the similarity between Nest and Angular. Option 1 on the other hand uses Express which is a minimalist framework, very popular one, but it doesn't provide the same scalability and brings decision fatigue about what to combine with it and may not utilize Typescript in the best way. Yet, on the other hand, it is flexible and it may be easier to manipulate things in different ways with it. Another very important thing is that it would be easier in my view to hire Node developers with skills in Express than NestJs. The majority of Node developers are much more familiar with JavaScript and Express.

What is your advice and why? I would love to hear especially from developers who worked on both Express and Nest

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Detailed Comparison

Spring Boot	NestJS
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.	Nest is a framework for building efficient, scalable Node.js server-side applications. It uses progressive JavaScript, is built with TypeScript (preserves compatibility with pure JavaScript) and combines elements of OOP (Object Oriented Programming), FP (Functional Programming), and FRP (Functional Reactive Programming). Under the hood, Nest makes use of Express, but also, provides compatibility with a wide range of other libraries, like e.g. Fastify, allowing for easy use of the myriad third-party plugins which are available.
-	Extensible - Gives you true flexibility by allowing use of any other libraries thanks to modular architecture.; Versatile - An adaptable ecosystem that is a fully-fledged backbone for all kinds of server-side applications.; Progressive - Takes advantage of latest JavaScript features, bringing design patterns and mature solutions to node.js world.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 78.9K	GitHub Stars 73.3K
GitHub Forks 41.6K	GitHub Forks 8.1K
Stacks 26.7K	Stacks 2.7K
Followers 24.3K	Followers 3.0K
Votes 1.0K	Votes 326
Pros & Cons
Pros 149 Powerful and handy 134 Easy setup 128 Java 90 Spring 85 Fast Cons 23 Heavy weight 18 Annotation ceremony 13 Java 11 Many config files needed 5 Reactive	Pros 54 Powerful but super friendly to work with 42 Fast development 40 Easy to understand documentation 36 Angular style syntax for the backend 32 NodeJS ecosystem Cons 10 Difficult to debug 10 User base is small. Less help on Stackoverflow 5 Angular-like architecture 3 Updates with breaking changes 3 Javascript
Integrations
Spring Java	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Spring Boot, NestJS?

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

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.

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.