Flow Type vs Handlebars.js

Overview

Handlebars.js

Stacks8.3K

Followers3.2K

Votes308

Flow (JS)

Stacks145

Followers75

Votes0

GitHub Stars22.2K

Forks1.9K

Flow (JS) vs Handlebars.js: What are the differences?

What is Flow (JS)? Flow is a static type checker for Javascript (by Facebook). Flow is a static type checker for Javascript created by Facebook.

What is Handlebars.js? Minimal Templating on Steroids. Handlebars.js is an extension to the Mustache templating language created by Chris Wanstrath. Handlebars.js and Mustache are both logicless templating languages that keep the view and the code separated like we all know they should be.

Flow (JS) can be classified as a tool in the "Static Type Checkers" category, while Handlebars.js is grouped under "Templating Languages & Extensions".

Flow (JS) and Handlebars.js are both open source tools. Flow (JS) with 19.7K GitHub stars and 1.68K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Handlebars.js with 14.6K GitHub stars and 1.87K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Handlebars.js has a broader approval, being mentioned in 643 company stacks & 175 developers stacks; compared to Flow (JS), which is listed in 35 company stacks and 18 developer stacks.

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Advice on Handlebars.js, Flow (JS)

StackShare

Aug 13, 2019

Needs adviceon

TypeScript

CoffeeScript

JavaScript

From a StackShare community member: "We are looking to rewrite our outdated front-end with TypeScript. Right now we have a mix of CoffeeScript and vanilla JavaScript. I have read that adopting TypeScript can help enforce better code quality, and best practices. I also heard good things about Flow (JS). Which one would you recommend and why?"

405k views405k

Comments

Asad

Software Engineer at Lisec Automation

Jun 15, 2020

Needs adviceon

.NET

Handlebars.js

@All: I am searching for the best template engine for .NET. I started looking into several template engines, including the Dotliquid, Handlebars.js, Scriban, and Razorlight. I found handlebar a bit difficult to use when using the loops and condition because you need to register for helper first. DotLiquid and Scriban were easy to use and in Razorlight I did not find the example for loops.

Can you please suggest which template engine is best suited for the use of conditional/list and looping and why? Or if anybody could provide me a resource or link where I can compare which is best?

Thanks In Advance

240k views240k

Comments

Oleksandr

Senior Software Engineer at joyn

Oct 21, 2019

Decided

Initially making a decision to use Flow vs Typescript we decided to go with flow as we wanted our code to run in a way we wrote it, because when using Flow types are simply removed from the code without modifying the code itself. Sadly, the type system of Flow was in some cases very hard to understand and declare the types correctly, especially in cases when the structure is very dynamic (e.g. object keys and values are created dynamically). Another reason was bad integration with IDE and frequent crashes which made DX very poor. Therefore, we made another evaluation of Typescript and decided to move towards it. As our code base was pretty big when we decided to migrate to TS we couldn't just stop and re-write everything, that's why we started writing new modules in Typescript as well as transforming old components. To make that possible we had to configure Webpack loader to support simultaneous bundling of Flow&JS and Typescript. After around 2 months of the transformation we have around 40% of code being written in Typescript and we are more than happy with integration TS has with IDE, as well as ease of declaring types for dynamic modules and functions.

149k views149k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Handlebars.js	Flow (JS)
Handlebars.js is an extension to the Mustache templating language created by Chris Wanstrath. Handlebars.js and Mustache are both logicless templating languages that keep the view and the code separated like we all know they should be.	Flow is a static type checker for Javascript created by Facebook.
-	Type Inference; Easy Integration; Realtime Feedback
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 22.2K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 1.9K
Stacks 8.3K	Stacks 145
Followers 3.2K	Followers 75
Votes 308	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 106 Simple 76 Great templating language 50 Open source 36 Logicless 20 Integrates well into any codebase	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Mustache	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Handlebars.js, Flow (JS)?

CoffeeScript

It adds syntactic sugar inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell in an effort to enhance JavaScript's brevity and readability. Specific additional features include list comprehension and de-structuring assignment.

TypeScript

TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript development. It's a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript.

Pug

This project was formerly known as "Jade." Pug is a high performance template engine heavily influenced by Haml and implemented with JavaScript for Node.js and browsers.

Mustache

Mustache is a logic-less template syntax. It can be used for HTML, config files, source code - anything. It works by expanding tags in a template using values provided in a hash or object. We call it "logic-less" because there are no if statements, else clauses, or for loops. Instead there are only tags. Some tags are replaced with a value, some nothing, and others a series of values.

Slim Lang

Slim is a template language whose goal is to reduce the view syntax to the essential parts without becoming cryptic. It started as an exercise to see how much could be removed from a standard html template (<, >, closing tags, etc...). As more people took an interest in Slim, the functionality grew and so did the flexibility of the syntax.

RactiveJS

Ractive was originally created at theguardian.com to produce news applications. Ractive takes your Mustache templates and transforms them into a lightweight representation of the DOM – then when your data changes, it intelligently updates the real DOM.

EJS

It is a simple templating language that lets you generate HTML markup with plain JavaScript. No religiousness about how to organize things. No reinvention of iteration and control-flow. It's just plain JavaScript.

Jinja

It is a full featured template engine for Python. It has full unicode support, an optional integrated sandboxed execution environment, widely used and BSD licensed.

Twig

It is a modern template engine for PHP. It is flexible, fast, and secure. Its syntax originates from Jinja and Django templates.

Nunjucks

Rich Powerful language with block inheritance, autoescaping, macros, asynchronous control, and more. Heavily inspired by jinja2. It supports all modern browsers.

Related Comparisons

Flow (JS) can be classified as a tool in the "Static Type Checkers" category, while Handlebars.js is grouped under "Templating Languages & Extensions".

Flow Type vs Handlebars.js