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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Cross Platform Mobile Development
  5. Grails vs Xamarin

Grails vs Xamarin

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Xamarin
Xamarin
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.5K
Votes785
Grails
Grails
Stacks384
Followers373
Votes333

Grails vs Xamarin: What are the differences?

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; Xamarin: Create iOS, Android and Mac apps in C#. Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

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

"Groovy" is the top reason why over 44 developers like Grails, while over 111 developers mention "Power of c# on mobile devices" as the leading cause for choosing Xamarin.

Grails is an open source tool with 2.48K GitHub stars and 945 GitHub forks. Here's a link to Grails's open source repository on GitHub.

Olo, Crowdkeep, and GoFormz are some of the popular companies that use Xamarin, whereas Grails is used by LinkedIn, PedidosYa, and MercadoLibre. Xamarin has a broader approval, being mentioned in 75 company stacks & 66 developers stacks; compared to Grails, which is listed in 47 company stacks and 22 developer stacks.

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Detailed Comparison

Xamarin
Xamarin
Grails
Grails

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

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.

Cross-platform development- Thinking about supporting iOS, Android, Mac and Windows? Xamarin allows you to write it all in C#.;Reuse existing code- Use your favorite .NET libraries in Xamarin apps. Easily use third-party native libraries and frameworks.; Discover as you type- Explore APIs as you type with code autocompletion.;Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio- Create, build, debug, and deploy apps in Visual Studio. Or use Xamarin Studio, a fully-featured IDE that is built for mobile app development.;Native UI, Native Performance- Xamarin delivers high performance compiled code with full access to all the native APIs so you can create native apps with device-specific experiences.; Point and Click UI Design- Xamarin provides a world class Android UI designer. Use Apple Xcode UI designer to create interfaces and Storyboards that automatically sync with your Xamarin.iOS project.
FLAT LEARNING CURVE; ON TOP OF SPRING BOOT; SMOOTH JAVA INTEGRATION; REST APIS, REACT, ANGULAR
Statistics
Stacks
1.3K
Stacks
384
Followers
1.5K
Followers
373
Votes
785
Votes
333
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 121
    Power of c# on mobile devices
  • 81
    Native performance
  • 79
    Native apps with native ui controls
  • 73
    No javascript - truely compiled code
  • 67
    Sharing more than 90% of code over all platforms
Cons
  • 9
    Build times
  • 5
    Visual Studio
  • 4
    Price
  • 3
    Complexity
  • 3
    Scalability
Pros
  • 56
    Groovy
  • 40
    Jvm
  • 38
    Rapid development
  • 37
    Gorm
  • 30
    Web framework
Cons
  • 3
    Frequent breaking changes
  • 2
    Undocumented features
Integrations
No integrations available
Sublime Text
Sublime Text
IntelliJ IDEA
IntelliJ IDEA
Eclipse
Eclipse
Java
Java
Spring Boot
Spring Boot
React
React
TextMate
TextMate
AngularJS
AngularJS
Groovy
Groovy

What are some alternatives to Xamarin, Grails?

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.

Ionic

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

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

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

React Native

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

Symfony

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

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