Javalin vs Rails API

Overview

Rails API

Stacks95

Followers142

Votes16

GitHub Stars5.1K

Forks275

Javalin

Stacks30

Followers64

Votes3

Javalin vs Rails API: What are the differences?

What is Javalin? Simple REST APIs for Java and Kotlin. Javalin started as a fork of the Spark framework but quickly turned into a ground-up rewrite influenced by express.js. Both of these web frameworks are inspired by the modern micro web framework grandfather: Sinatra, so if you’re coming from Ruby then Javalin shouldn’t feel too unfamiliar.

What is Rails API? Rails for API only applications. Rails::API is a subset of a normal Rails application, created for applications that don't require all functionality that a complete Rails application provides. It is a bit more lightweight, and consequently a bit faster than a normal Rails application. The main example for its usage is in API applications only, where you usually don't need the entire Rails middleware stack nor template generation.

Javalin and Rails API can be primarily classified as "Microframeworks (Backend)" tools.

Javalin and Rails API are both open source tools. It seems that Rails API with 5.26K GitHub stars and 293 forks on GitHub has more adoption than Javalin with 3.05K GitHub stars and 257 GitHub forks.

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Advice on Rails API, Javalin

Juan José

May 1, 2020

Decided

I developed Hexagon heavily inspired in these great tools because of the following reasons:

Take full advantage of the Kotlin programming language without any strings attached to Java (as a language).
I wanted to be able to replace the HTTP server library used with different adapters (Jetty, Netty, etc.) and though right now there is only one, more are coming.
Have a complete tool to do full applications, though you can use other libraries, Hexagon comes with a dependency injection helper, settings loading from different sources and HTTP Client, so it comes with (batteries included).

Right now I'm using it for my pet projects, and I'm happy with it.

35.9k views35.9k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Rails API	Javalin
Rails::API is a subset of a normal Rails application, created for applications that don't require all functionality that a complete Rails application provides. It is a bit more lightweight, and consequently a bit faster than a normal Rails application. The main example for its usage is in API applications only, where you usually don't need the entire Rails middleware stack nor template generation.	Javalin started as a fork of the Spark framework but quickly turned into a ground-up rewrite influenced by express.js. Both of these web frameworks are inspired by the modern micro web framework grandfather: Sinatra, so if you’re coming from Ruby then Javalin shouldn’t feel too unfamiliar.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 5.1K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 275	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 95	Stacks 30
Followers 142	Followers 64
Votes 16	Votes 3
Pros & Cons
Pros 5 Great for quick decoupled apps 5 Lightweight 3 Simply the best 2 Soon to be merged into core Rails 5 1 Logging by default	Pros 1 Does not require IDEA plugins 1 Rich support of template engines 1 Lightweight
Integrations
Ruby	Kotlin Java

What are some alternatives to Rails API, Javalin?

ExpressJS

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.

Django REST framework

It is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.

Sails.js

Sails is designed to mimic the MVC pattern of frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the requirements of modern apps: data-driven APIs with scalable, service-oriented architecture.

Sinatra

Sinatra is a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort.

Lumen

Laravel Lumen is a stunningly fast PHP micro-framework for building web applications with expressive, elegant syntax. We believe development must be an enjoyable, creative experience to be truly fulfilling. Lumen attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as routing, database abstraction, queueing, and caching.

Slim

Slim is easy to use for both beginners and professionals. Slim favors cleanliness over terseness and common cases over edge cases. Its interface is simple, intuitive, and extensively documented — both online and in the code itself.

Fastify

Fastify is a web framework highly focused on speed and low overhead. It is inspired from Hapi and Express and as far as we know, it is one of the fastest web frameworks in town. Use Fastify can increase your throughput up to 100%.

Falcon

Falcon is a minimalist WSGI library for building speedy web APIs and app backends. We like to think of Falcon as the Dieter Rams of web frameworks.

hapi

hapi is a simple to use configuration-centric framework with built-in support for input validation, caching, authentication, and other essential facilities for building web applications and services.

TypeORM

It supports both Active Record and Data Mapper patterns, unlike all other JavaScript ORMs currently in existence, which means you can write high quality, loosely coupled, scalable, maintainable applications the most productive way.