We inherited this project and the backend is using LoopBack v3. I haven't taken a look at Loopback.io v4, but I'm planning to replace it. The reason being is that Loopback v3 documentation is a bit confusing and we are having trouble packaging the build using Webpack. Not to mention, integrating unit tests (latest Jest).
I still think Loopback is a great tool, but their documentation is really "messy" and hard to navigate through. There's also a constraint of time from our side. So what's the best option out there?
Should I try upgrading to Loopback v4, or trying other stuff? (i.e. NestJS)
Thanks!
I would recommend to try out LoopBack 4 for the following reasons:
- Your current project uses LoopBack 3. It would be easier to find the functional parity. We have built migration guides and tools for that purpose - see https://loopback.io/doc/en/lb4/migration-overview.html
- We heard you about the documentation and have rolled out a lot of improvements recently. Please check out https://loopback.io/doc/en/lb4.
- LoopBack 4 has built in a few powerful patterns for great extensibility and composability and you'll find them very valuable for you to build complex solutions.
- IMO, NestJS is great and its strength is in handling incoming requests. LoopBack goes beyond that to facilitate integration with backend data and services.
Disclaimer: I'm a maintainer of LoopBack project. You're welcome to raise more questions on our Slack channel - https://join.slack.com/t/loopbackio/shared_invite/zt-8lbow73r-SKAKz61Vdao~_rGf91pcsw
As part of a new service we planned, we decided to choose Loopback v3 and v4 as POC and it was a nightmare.
After 2 weeks of fighting with the loopback framework and try to understand the documentation, we decided to search for other frameworks, we tried Adonis, Hapi, and many more.
After about a month of multiple POCs (I guess we had too much free time and we wanted something for the long run), we came across Nestjs when it was version 4 or 5 I think and it was great, we started to promote this framework within the company and we are using this framework in multiple new services in high scale and it works great! Super flexible and full express or fastify support.
It has monorepo support and I'm personally using it with NX for monorepo (Nx, terraform and nestjs with typeorm)
It's not yet perfect but has a great community and its expanding pretty nice :)
