GraphQL vs Play

Overview

Play

Stacks752

Followers609

Votes496

GitHub Stars12.6K

Forks4.1K

GraphQL

Stacks34.9K

Followers28.1K

Votes309

GraphQL vs Play: What are the differences?

What is GraphQL? A data query language and runtime. 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.

What is Play? The High Velocity Web Framework For Java and Scala. Play Framework makes it easy to build web applications with Java & Scala. Play is based on a lightweight, stateless, web-friendly architecture. Built on Akka, Play provides predictable and minimal resource consumption (CPU, memory, threads) for highly-scalable applications.

GraphQL belongs to "Query Languages" category of the tech stack, while Play can be primarily classified under "Frameworks (Full Stack)".

"Schemas defined by the requests made by the user", "Will replace RESTful interfaces" and "The future of API's" are the key factors why developers consider GraphQL; whereas "Scala", "Web-friendly architecture" and "Built on akka" are the primary reasons why Play is favored.

GraphQL and Play are both open source tools. GraphQL with 11.7K GitHub stars and 753 forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Play with 11.2K GitHub stars and 3.77K GitHub forks.

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are some of the popular companies that use GraphQL, whereas Play is used by Coursera, Zalando, and Keen. GraphQL has a broader approval, being mentioned in 561 company stacks & 750 developers stacks; compared to Play, which is listed in 112 company stacks and 47 developer stacks.

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Manual

Detailed Comparison

Play	GraphQL
Play Framework makes it easy to build web applications with Java & Scala. Play is based on a lightweight, stateless, web-friendly architecture. Built on Akka, Play provides predictable and minimal resource consumption (CPU, memory, threads) for highly-scalable applications.	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.
-	Hierarchical;Product-centric;Client-specified queries;Backwards Compatible;Structured, Arbitrary Code;Application-Layer Protocol;Strongly-typed;Introspective
Statistics
GitHub Stars 12.6K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 4.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 752	Stacks 34.9K
Followers 609	Followers 28.1K
Votes 496	Votes 309
Pros & Cons
Pros 81 Scala 55 Web-friendly architecture 55 Built on akka 50 Stateless 47 High-scalable Cons 3 Evolves fast, keep up with releases 1 Unnecessarily complicated	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 Self-documenting Cons 4 Hard to migrate from GraphQL to another technology 4 More code to type. 2 Takes longer to build compared to schemaless. 1 No support for caching 1 No built in security

What are some alternatives to Play, GraphQL?

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

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 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

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

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

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 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 provides a rich application framework that allows you to build innovative apps and games for mobile devices in a Java language environment.

Related Comparisons

GraphQL belongs to "Query Languages" category of the tech stack, while Play can be primarily classified under "Frameworks (Full Stack)".

GraphQL vs Play