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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Frameworks
  5. GraphQL vs MEAN

GraphQL vs MEAN

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

MEAN
MEAN
Stacks337
Followers617
Votes594
GitHub Stars12.1K
Forks3.4K
GraphQL
GraphQL
Stacks34.9K
Followers28.1K
Votes309

GraphQL vs MEAN: What are the differences?

Introduction: GraphQL and MEAN are technologies commonly used in web development, but they serve different purposes and have distinct features. Understanding the key differences between GraphQL and MEAN can help developers make informed decisions regarding which technology to adopt in their projects.

  1. Query language vs Full-stack framework: The key difference between GraphQL and MEAN is that GraphQL is a query language for APIs, allowing clients to request only the data they need, while MEAN is a full-stack JavaScript framework that includes MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, and Node.js. GraphQL focuses on efficient data fetching and querying, while MEAN provides a comprehensive set of tools for building web applications.

  2. Data Fetching Efficiencies: GraphQL allows clients to specify exactly what data they need, reducing over-fetching and under-fetching issues commonly found in REST APIs. On the other hand, in MEAN, data fetching efficiencies depend on how the developer models the data and structures the API endpoints within the application.

  3. Real-time Capabilities: MEAN stack, particularly with the integration of tools like Socket.IO, enables real-time features in applications through bidirectional communication between the client and server. In contrast, while GraphQL itself does not inherently support real-time functionality, it can be combined with other technologies like WebSockets to achieve similar capabilities.

  4. Type System: GraphQL comes with a strong type system, allowing developers to define the shape of their data using a schema. This makes API development more predictable and enables tools like GraphiQL for easier experimentation. On the other hand, MEAN stack applications rely on schema-less databases like MongoDB, which can provide more flexibility but may lead to inconsistencies in data structure.

  5. Scalability and Performance: MEAN stack applications can be highly scalable due to the asynchronous, event-driven nature of Node.js and the flexibility of MongoDB. However, GraphQL's ability to request only the necessary data can also improve the performance of applications by reducing the payload size and number of server requests.

  6. Learning Curve: While both GraphQL and MEAN have their unique learning curves, GraphQL's query language and type system may require developers to adapt to a new way of structuring and fetching data compared to traditional RESTful APIs. On the other hand, MEAN stack developers need to be familiar with the different technologies included in the stack and how they interact with each other.

In Summary, GraphQL focuses on efficient data fetching with a query language for APIs, while MEAN is a full-stack framework with real-time capabilities and a focus on scalability and performance.

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Advice on MEAN, GraphQL

Raj
Raj

Oct 10, 2020

Review

It purely depends on your app needs. Does it need to be scalable, do you have lots of features, OR it is a simple project with very simple needs - many of those parameters clarify which technologies will fit.

If you are looking for a quick solution, that reduces lot of development time, take a look at postgraphile (https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/). You have to just define the schema and you get the entire graph-ql apis built for you and you can just focus on your frontend.

On frontend, React is good, but also need to remember that it is popular because it introduced one way data writes and in-built virtual dom + diffing to determine which dom to modify. Though personally I liked it, am recently more inclined to Svelte because its lightweightedness and absence of virtual dom and its simplicity compared to the huge ecosystem that React has surrounded itself with.

In all situations, frameworks keep changing over time. What is best today is not considered even good few years from now. What is important is to have the logic in a separate, clean manner void of too many framework related dependencies - that way you can switch one framework with another very easily.

3.77k views3.77k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

MEAN
MEAN
GraphQL
GraphQL

MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular, Node) is a boilerplate that provides a nice starting point for MongoDB, Node.js, Express, and AngularJS based applications. It is designed to give you a quick and organized way to start developing MEAN based web apps with useful modules like Mongoose and Passport pre-bundled and configured.

GraphQL is a data query language and runtime designed and used at Facebook to request and deliver data to mobile and web apps since 2012.

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Hierarchical;Product-centric;Client-specified queries;Backwards Compatible;Structured, Arbitrary Code;Application-Layer Protocol;Strongly-typed;Introspective
Statistics
GitHub Stars
12.1K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
3.4K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
337
Stacks
34.9K
Followers
617
Followers
28.1K
Votes
594
Votes
309
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 86
    Javascript
  • 62
    Easy
  • 58
    Nosql
  • 52
    Great community
  • 50
    Mongoose
Pros
  • 75
    Schemas defined by the requests made by the user
  • 63
    Will replace RESTful interfaces
  • 62
    The future of API's
  • 49
    The future of databases
  • 12
    Get many resources in a single request
Cons
  • 4
    Hard to migrate from GraphQL to another technology
  • 4
    More code to type.
  • 2
    Takes longer to build compared to schemaless.
  • 1
    All the pros sound like NFT pitches
  • 1
    Works just like any other API at runtime
Integrations
MongoDB
MongoDB
Node.js
Node.js
ExpressJS
ExpressJS
AngularJS
AngularJS
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to MEAN, GraphQL?

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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