Beego vs Buffalo: What are the differences?

Introduction

Beego and Buffalo are both popular web frameworks for building applications in Go programming language. While they share some similarities, there are several key differences that set them apart from each other. In this article, we will highlight six main differences between Beego and Buffalo.

1. Philosophy and Approach: Beego follows a traditional MVC pattern and provides a flexible structure for developing web applications. On the other hand, Buffalo emphasizes convention over configuration and promotes a more holistic approach to application development.

2. Code Generation: Buffalo comes with a built-in code generation tool called "buffalo" which quickly scaffolds new projects, models, controllers, and views. Beego does not have a similar code generation tool, requiring developers to manually create these components.

3. Built-in Features: Buffalo includes various built-in features such as authentication, authorization, session management, and database migration tools. In contrast, Beego provides a lighter footprint and leaves it up to developers to choose and integrate third-party libraries for these functionalities.

4. Middleware Support: Beego offers a wide range of built-in middleware for handling different aspects of a web application, such as logging, security, compression, and more. Buffalo also provides middleware support, but with a smaller selection compared to Beego.

5. Learning Curve and Documentation: Beego has been around for a longer time and has a larger user community, resulting in extensive documentation, tutorials, and community support. Buffalo, being a relatively newer framework, has a smaller community and less extensive documentation, which might make it slightly harder for beginners to get started.

6. Modularity: Beego provides a modular structure that allows developers to selectively use different components based on their needs. Buffalo, on the other hand, promotes a monolithic approach, where all components are automatically included in the project, which can be beneficial for rapid application development but might not suit all scenarios.

In summary, Beego and Buffalo differ in their approach to web application development, code generation capabilities, built-in features, middleware support, learning curve, and modularity. Developers should carefully consider these differences when choosing a framework based on their project requirements and personal preferences.