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  5. ExpressJS vs Grails

ExpressJS vs Grails

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Grails
Grails
Stacks384
Followers373
Votes333
ExpressJS
ExpressJS
Stacks35.1K
Followers24.0K
Votes1.6K

ExpressJS vs Grails: What are the differences?

  1. Architecture: ExpressJS is a minimalist and unopinionated framework, giving developers more freedom in designing the structure of their application, while Grails is a full-stack framework that follows the Convention over Configuration principle, providing a structured way to build applications.

  2. Languages: ExpressJS is primarily built using JavaScript, making it a great choice for developers already familiar with the language, whereas Grails is built using Groovy, a language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine, offering the power of Java with the simplicity of a scripting language.

  3. Community Support: ExpressJS has a large and active community, providing extensive documentation, tutorials, and plugins for developers, while Grails has a smaller community compared to ExpressJS, which can sometimes lead to fewer resources and support available.

  4. Performance: ExpressJS is known for its high performance and speed due to its lightweight nature, making it a preferred choice for building fast and scalable applications, while Grails, being built on top of the JVM, might not be as fast as ExpressJS in certain scenarios.

  5. Integration: ExpressJS easily integrates with various databases, front-end frameworks, and tools, offering flexibility in choosing components, whereas Grails provides seamless integration with Java libraries, plugins, and tools, making it a suitable option for Java developers seeking rapid application development.

  6. Learning Curve: ExpressJS has a steeper learning curve compared to Grails, especially for beginners, as it requires a solid understanding of JavaScript and its ecosystem, while Grails, with its Convention over Configuration approach, simplifies development for Java developers who are already familiar with the language and its conventions.

In Summary, ExpressJS and Grails differ in architecture, languages, community support, performance, integration capabilities, and learning curve, catering to different preferences and requirements of developers.

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Advice on Grails, ExpressJS

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

Grails
Grails
ExpressJS
ExpressJS

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.

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.

FLAT LEARNING CURVE; ON TOP OF SPRING BOOT; SMOOTH JAVA INTEGRATION; REST APIS, REACT, ANGULAR
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
Statistics
Stacks
384
Stacks
35.1K
Followers
373
Followers
24.0K
Votes
333
Votes
1.6K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 56
    Groovy
  • 40
    Jvm
  • 38
    Rapid development
  • 37
    Gorm
  • 30
    Web framework
Cons
  • 3
    Frequent breaking changes
  • 2
    Undocumented features
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
Integrations
Sublime Text
Sublime Text
IntelliJ IDEA
IntelliJ IDEA
Eclipse
Eclipse
Java
Java
Spring Boot
Spring Boot
React
React
TextMate
TextMate
AngularJS
AngularJS
Groovy
Groovy
Node.js
Node.js

What are some alternatives to Grails, ExpressJS?

Node.js

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

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

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Laravel

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

.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

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

Symfony

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

Spring

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.

Spring Boot

Spring Boot

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.

Android SDK

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.

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