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  1. Stackups
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  4. Microframeworks
  5. ExpressJS vs FeathersJS

ExpressJS vs FeathersJS

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

ExpressJS
ExpressJS
Stacks35.1K
Followers24.0K
Votes1.6K
FeathersJS
FeathersJS
Stacks162
Followers341
Votes70
GitHub Stars15.2K
Forks793

ExpressJS vs FeathersJS: What are the differences?

Key Differences Between ExpressJS and FeathersJS

  1. Routing and Middleware: ExpressJS has a simple routing system that allows developers to create routes and handle requests with middleware functions. On the other hand, FeathersJS provides a more powerful routing system that leverages Express under the hood but adds extra features like hooks for pre and post-processing requests and responses.

  2. Real-Time Functionality: FeathersJS excels in real-time functionality by providing built-in support for WebSockets and real-time communication. It allows developers to easily create real-time applications by enabling real-time events and bidirectional communication between clients and servers. ExpressJS, on the other hand, does not have native support for real-time functionality and requires additional libraries or modules to achieve the same result.

  3. Service-Oriented Architecture: FeathersJS follows a service-oriented architecture which allows developers to organize their code into reusable and modular services. This approach makes it easier to manage and maintain the codebase by encapsulating business logic within services. ExpressJS, on the other hand, does not enforce any specific architecture and leaves the code organization to the developer.

  4. Database Integration: FeathersJS provides out-of-the-box integration with various databases such as MongoDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL through its database adapters. These adapters simplify the process of performing CRUD operations and handling database connections. In contrast, ExpressJS does not have built-in support for database integration and requires developers to use separate database libraries or ORMs.

  5. Authentication and Authorization: FeathersJS provides built-in authentication and authorization functionalities, making it easier to implement user authentication and access control in applications. It supports various authentication strategies like local authentication, token-based authentication, and social login. ExpressJS, on the other hand, does not provide native authentication and authorization functionalities, requiring developers to implement them manually or rely on external libraries.

  6. FeathersJS Hooks: FeathersJS introduces the concept of hooks, which are functions that allow developers to modify or process data before or after a service method is called. These hooks can be used for validation, data transformation, and other middleware-like functions. ExpressJS does not have a built-in equivalent feature for hooks, although developers can achieve similar functionality by using middleware functions.

In Summary, FeathersJS provides a more feature-rich and opinionated framework compared to ExpressJS, with support for real-time functionality, service-oriented architecture, built-in database integration, authentication, and authorization functionalities, as well as the capability to use hooks for pre and post-processing of service methods.

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Advice on ExpressJS, FeathersJS

Tony
Tony

Oct 21, 2020

Review

I personally like using a wholly JS stack, with TypeORM + MySql/Postgres over MongoDb + Mongoose because TypeOrm's Typescript support is much stronger. After developing large projects with Typescript, there is no going back to regular javascript (typings help catch a LOT of errors / maintains data structure !)

Sticking with a javascript stack will allow you to share certain aspects of your application between front and backend. For example: one particularly common feature is to validate API call data and form entry data. Both of these are the same data shape typically (aside from pagination, metadata, etc), and can benefit from a single schema for validation. I use Yup to define this schema, then in the front and back end I can utilize this definition instead of rewriting the same logic in two different languages.

Same goes for certain utility functions such as data structure typings, decryption, encryption, sanitizing inputs, formatting of data, and other utilities. No point of writing these in two languages when both frontend and backend will use them. It will also help reduce developer work load, due to less tests / code to work with.

The only thing you must ensure in your import chain the frontend never imports any secret variables or sensitive logic used by the backend, as that will get bundled into your application. All shared imports should be individual modules

If you want to go one step further, next.js is basically create react app with server side rendering (SSR). This would allow you to skip the annoying step of configuring separate backend and frontend build tools. Might be worth exploring depending on your skill level.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

ExpressJS
ExpressJS
FeathersJS
FeathersJS

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.

Feathers is a real-time, micro-service web framework for NodeJS that gives you control over your data via RESTful resources, sockets and flexible plug-ins.

Robust routing;HTTP helpers (redirection, caching, etc);View system supporting 14+ template engines;Content negotiation;Focus on high performance;Executable for generating applications quickly;High test coverage
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Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
15.2K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
793
Stacks
35.1K
Stacks
162
Followers
24.0K
Followers
341
Votes
1.6K
Votes
70
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 381
    Simple
  • 336
    Node.js
  • 244
    Javascript
  • 193
    High performance
  • 152
    Robust routing
Cons
  • 27
    Not python
  • 17
    Overrated
  • 14
    No multithreading
  • 9
    Javascript
  • 5
    Not fast
Pros
  • 12
    Real-time
  • 7
    Datastore Agnostic
  • 7
    Choose any ORM
  • 6
    Flexible Plugins
  • 5
    Choose Socketio or Primus
Integrations
Node.js
Node.js
Node.js
Node.js

What are some alternatives to ExpressJS, FeathersJS?

Django REST framework

Django REST framework

It is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.

Sails.js

Sails.js

Sails is designed to mimic the MVC pattern of frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the requirements of modern apps: data-driven APIs with scalable, service-oriented architecture.

Sinatra

Sinatra

Sinatra is a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort.

Lumen

Lumen

Laravel Lumen is a stunningly fast PHP micro-framework for building web applications with expressive, elegant syntax. We believe development must be an enjoyable, creative experience to be truly fulfilling. Lumen attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as routing, database abstraction, queueing, and caching.

Slim

Slim

Slim is easy to use for both beginners and professionals. Slim favors cleanliness over terseness and common cases over edge cases. Its interface is simple, intuitive, and extensively documented — both online and in the code itself.

Fastify

Fastify

Fastify is a web framework highly focused on speed and low overhead. It is inspired from Hapi and Express and as far as we know, it is one of the fastest web frameworks in town. Use Fastify can increase your throughput up to 100%.

Falcon

Falcon

Falcon is a minimalist WSGI library for building speedy web APIs and app backends. We like to think of Falcon as the Dieter Rams of web frameworks.

hapi

hapi

hapi is a simple to use configuration-centric framework with built-in support for input validation, caching, authentication, and other essential facilities for building web applications and services.

TypeORM

TypeORM

It supports both Active Record and Data Mapper patterns, unlike all other JavaScript ORMs currently in existence, which means you can write high quality, loosely coupled, scalable, maintainable applications the most productive way.

Flask

Flask

Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind.

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