Apache Cordova vs Grails

Overview

Grails

Stacks384

Followers373

Votes333

Apache Cordova

Stacks686

Followers892

Votes218

GitHub Stars955

Forks345

Apache Cordova vs Grails: What are the differences?

Apache Cordova: Platform for building native mobile applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; 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.

Apache Cordova can be classified as a tool in the "Cross-Platform Mobile Development" category, while Grails is grouped under "Frameworks (Full Stack)".

"Lots of plugins" is the top reason why over 31 developers like Apache Cordova, while over 44 developers mention "Groovy" as the leading cause for choosing Grails.

Apache Cordova and Grails are both open source tools. Grails with 2.48K GitHub stars and 945 forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Apache Cordova with 766 GitHub stars and 327 GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Apache Cordova has a broader approval, being mentioned in 96 company stacks & 45 developers stacks; compared to Grails, which is listed in 47 company stacks and 22 developer stacks.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Grails, Apache Cordova

Aleksandr

Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft at Microsoft-365

Dec 23, 2019

Review

What is `Proguard`?

ProGuard is the most popular optimizer for Java bytecode. It makes your Java and Android applications up to 90% smaller and up to 20% faster. ProGuard also provides minimal protection against reverse engineering by obfuscating the names of classes, fields and methods.

How to use it in `Cordova` app?

I didn't find any plugins for it. So I've implemented it by myself and shared it on GitHub.

Feel free to use!

119k views119k

Comments

Aleksandr

Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft at Microsoft-365

Dec 23, 2019

Needs advice

I've done some Hybrid Mobile apps with both technologies Apache Cordova and React Native and described my experience in my blog.

In a few words, I would suggest to use each technology in accordance what what is your current code base and what do you want to achieve.

React Native is a great option if you need that extra edge in performance with multi-threading and native UI rendering. Or you already have a web app based on React which you want to port to mobile.

On the other hand, if you have an existing web application code and you want to reuse some or all, including the ability to use web third-party libraries, then Cordova is the best option.

429k views429k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Grails	Apache Cordova
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.	Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
FLAT LEARNING CURVE; ON TOP OF SPRING BOOT; SMOOTH JAVA INTEGRATION; REST APIS, REACT, ANGULAR	Cross-platform (CLI) workflow;Platform-centered workflow;Hundreds of plugins
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 955
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 345
Stacks 384	Stacks 686
Followers 373	Followers 892
Votes 333	Votes 218
Pros & Cons
Pros 56 Groovy 40 Jvm 38 Rapid development 37 Gorm 30 Web framework Cons 3 Frequent breaking changes 2 Undocumented features	Pros 48 Lots of plugins 35 JavaScript 26 Great community 25 Easy Development 18 Easy to learn Cons 2 No native performance 1 Hard to install 0 Hard to install
Integrations
Sublime Text IntelliJ IDEA Eclipse Java Spring Boot React TextMate AngularJS Groovy	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Grails, Apache Cordova?

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.

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

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.

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Symfony

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

Related Comparisons

"Lots of plugins" is the top reason why over 31 developers like Apache Cordova, while over 44 developers mention "Groovy" as the leading cause for choosing Grails.

Apache Cordova vs Grails