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Koa vs NestJS: What are the differences?

Koa and NestJS are both web frameworks for building server-side applications. Let's explore the key differences between them.

  1. Architecture and Philosophy: Koa is a more minimalistic and lightweight framework that follows a middleware-based approach, allowing developers to have granular control over the request/response flow. On the other hand, NestJS follows a modular architectural pattern with a strong emphasis on convention over configuration, providing a complete and opinionated solution for building scalable server-side applications.

  2. Language Support: Koa is written in JavaScript, making it accessible for developers who are familiar with this language. On the contrary, NestJS is written in TypeScript, which adds static typings for better tooling, enhanced developer experience, and improved code maintainability.

  3. Advanced Features and Ecosystem: While both frameworks provide essential features such as routing, middleware handling, and request/response handling, NestJS goes a step further by offering built-in support for decorators, dependency injection, GraphQL, WebSockets, and more. Koa, being a minimalist framework, focuses on core functionalities and encourages developers to choose from a vast ecosystem of community-driven middleware packages for additional features.

  4. Community and Learning Resources: Koa has a smaller community compared to NestJS, resulting in a relatively smaller number of learning resources, tutorials, and user-contributed packages. NestJS, on the other hand, benefits from a larger and rapidly growing community, offering extensive documentation, official guides, video courses, and a variety of third-party packages to support developers in building complex applications.

  5. Integration with Express Middlewares: Koa has a compatibility layer that allows the integration of many Express middlewares. This means that developers who have existing Express middleware solutions can easily migrate or reuse their code with minimal changes when using Koa. In contrast, NestJS does not have native support for Express middleware compatibility, which may require more effort for developers to integrate existing Express middleware solutions into their NestJS applications.

  6. Maturity and Adoption: Koa is considered to be a mature framework with a stable API, but it has a relatively lower adoption rate compared to NestJS. On the other hand, NestJS has gained significant popularity due to its scalability, integration capabilities, and strong community support. This higher adoption rate reflects the increasing usage and trust in NestJS among developers and organizations.

In summary, Koa is suited for developers seeking flexibility and simplicity, allowing them to assemble middleware as needed, while NestJS is ideal for those who prefer a convention-driven framework with a modular architecture, reminiscent of Angular, facilitating the development of scalable and maintainable server-side applications.

Advice on Koa and NestJS
Needs advice
on
DjangoDjangoNestJSNestJS
and
Spring FrameworkSpring Framework

Hi there, I'm deciding the technology to use in my project.

I need to build software that has:

  • Login
  • Register
  • Main View (access to a user account, News, General Info, Business hours, software, and parts section).
  • Account Preferences.
  • Web Shop for Parts (Support, Download Sections, Ticket System).

The most critical functionality is a WebSocket that connects between a car that sends real-time data through serial communication, and a server performs diagnosis on the car and sends the results back to the user.

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Replies (4)
Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

You can use NestJs with microservice architecture.where you can also use socket.io for web socket. you can use MongoDB (For real-time data) & MySQL for customer management.if you don't want to implement websocket.you can use firebase.it gives realtime database & firestore.which can handle millions of connections and scale it up.

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Mohammad-Ali A'râbi
Software Engineer at AppTec GmbH · | 5 upvotes · 206.7K views
Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

I would also go with NestJS. I would say Java is unnecessarily complicated and limited. And Python is not typed. TypeScript is powerful and typed and goes well with NestJS, especially using RxJS.

Django does not enforce backend-frontend separation, which probably was a good thing back in the days, but not anymore. But on the other hand enforces the project structure to you, which I don't like.

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Amit Parameshwar
NodeJS Intern at CartRabbit · | 3 upvotes · 562.6K views
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js

Just a simple Node.JS app with templating engine for UI can be sufficient for what you want to achieve.

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Recommends
on
Spring FrameworkSpring Framework

Spring boot with Spring Security[JWT], Websocket, Thymeleaf or Mustache, and styling with Bootstrap.

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Slimane Deb
Needs advice
on
NestJSNestJS
and
Spring BootSpring Boot
in

I am currently planning to build a project from scratch. I will be using Angular as front-end framework, but for the back-end I am not sure which framework to use between Spring Boot and NestJS. I have worked with Spring Boot before, but my new project contains a lot of I/O operations, in fact it will show a daily report. I thought about the new Spring Web Reactive Framework but given the idea that Node.js is the most popular on handling non blocking I/O I am planning to start learning NestJS since it is based on Angular philosophy and TypeScript which I am familiar with. Looking forward to hear from you dear Community.

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Replies (2)
Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

NestJS is an excellent framework (they both are). I would say the fact that you're working with Angular makes NestJS a great match, unless you're splitting front and back end between developers. But even in that case I would still go with NestJS for a new project.

Regarding the single threading point, take a look at PM2 which helps to run Node in multiple processes (we use it with NestJS) https://pm2.keymetrics.io/docs/usage/cluster-mode/

Also regarding web server performance in general this is an interesting post showing how Node with outperform Java in a web situation (be careful though, best to check a few posts to make sure these aren't totally biased benchmarks!): https://www.tandemseven.com/blog/performance-java-vs-node/

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Recommends
on
KotlinKotlin

Node.js has only 1 real thread per process; Java JIT will mostly run faster than JS one; So if it happens to be not only I/O... Why do you need most popular, not simply popular? Does Node.js have tech advantages?

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Louai Hamada
Full Stack Web Developer · | 7 upvotes · 510.7K views
Needs advice
on
ExpressJSExpressJSNestJSNestJS
and
Node.jsNode.js

I'm planning with a small team to create an application which is a platform for restaurants. I'm on the backend almost alone currently. I'm going to use Node.js for that, and I'm very fond of TypeScript, and I worked before mostly with ExpressJS. The team may get bigger as the application becomes bigger and more successful, so I have the Scalability concern in mind now, and I was considering these options: 1) Use Node+Express+Typescript 2) Use Node+NestJs (which utilizes Typescript by default)

Option 2 is enticing to me because recently I came to love NestJS and it provides more scalability for the project and uses Typescript in the best way and uses Express under the hood. Also I come from an Angular 2 background, which I think is the best frontend framework (my opinion, and I know React quite well), which makes Nest feel familiar to me because of the similarity between Nest and Angular. Option 1 on the other hand uses Express which is a minimalist framework, very popular one, but it doesn't provide the same scalability and brings decision fatigue about what to combine with it and may not utilize Typescript in the best way. Yet, on the other hand, it is flexible and it may be easier to manipulate things in different ways with it. Another very important thing is that it would be easier in my view to hire Node developers with skills in Express than NestJs. The majority of Node developers are much more familiar with JavaScript and Express.

What is your advice and why? I would love to hear especially from developers who worked on both Express and Nest

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Replies (6)
Wender Machado
Full Stack Engineer at RG Sistemas · | 9 upvotes · 398K views
Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

I highly recommend NestJS because:

  • It's a framework you already like;
  • Typescript is growing fast, being increasingly adopted in the community;
  • All layers are well defined, not needing to think much about the organization;
  • Great documentation;
  • Nest CLI increases the development speed and keep the pattern;

Only using express and knowing that project can grow, you'ill need to define the structure well so that it doesn't get out of control.

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Rhoger Anacleto
Developer at Magrathea Labs · | 5 upvotes · 398K views
Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

Hi Louai,

I am quite sure that you know the answer to your problem. And I am here to help you to follow your arrow. I have worked with the most popular Nodejs frameworks and I can sure you that there's no stack better than NestJS (at all). Typescript is the best thing that happened with Javascript, this is a fact. Ans NestJS make a such wonderful job using all the best Typescript tools. NestJS is the most mature and organized API manager. Its modular dependence injection, the use of DDD, the solid idea of single responsibility, it's unit a and e2e testing support, its documentation is the most incredible work in the world of Nodejs. You won't regret choosing this framework, even if your application grows a lot. If you follow the documentation tips you will be able to create an amazing and organized application.

ps: I am not part of the NestJS team, I am just a guy tired of wasting time with dumb and bad Frameworks and its bad documentations. I find relief in NestJS with all the time it's saved to me, it helped me to improve my job and let me create great things with Nodejs.

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Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

I would definitely suggest NestJs over other options because NestJs gives a lot of tooling. it would definitely suggest NestJs over other options because NestJs gives a lot of tooling & it gives a lot of functionality out of the box. If your team worked with angular 2+ then it will really easy to learn.

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Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

First of all, my experience using either Node.js with Express or NestJS is not wide. I liked NestJS due to it's similarity to Angular, so when you know Angluar and like TypeScript you are going to love NestJS, it will be instantly very familiar and easy to use, it's adds a good structure to the project out of the box and well, it uses TypeScript, which is a more structured language - it's good for scalability. As for performance concern s - NestJS is based on Node, it just brings Angular's modular structure to it, so the question is more about how is the additional layer influences the performance - I cannot answer that.

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Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

Hi, I'm in a similar position, but related to personal projects. After falling in love with few frameworks in the first day and rejecting them in day 2, I started learning nestJS last week. I currently develop personal side projects using cakephp, and I intend to migrate to nest + vue. This week I'm taking a nestJS course in order to be sure that this is what I want by praticing a little. If you didn't do it yet, I suggest you try to code a todo app or a similar example API using nest, so you can "feel" if this is indeed what you want to use in this larger-scale project.

Some of the characteristics that got my attention to nestJS are typescript, a lot of annotations/decorations, an oppinionated approach to organizing the project, nice documentation and discord, and it's evolution at npm trends shows me it's probably not going to vanish or get buggy anytime soon.

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Recommends
on
hapihapi

Have you checked out Hapi as an alternative? I'ts not Typescript by default though. If that doesn't seem too interesting, it sounds like you want to go with NestJS :)

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Decisions about Koa and NestJS
Radoslaw Fabisiak

We builded Duomly with: BE: Node.JS & Nest.JS & TypeScript & PostgreSQL and FE: React & Sass & Javascript.

The whole of the stack is JS related what helps us to keep development on a track. When building backend we decided to go go for TS & Nest.js because we had experience with Javascript and still wanted to have control over types.

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Pros of Koa
Pros of NestJS
  • 6
    Async/Await
  • 5
    JavaScript
  • 1
    REST API
  • 54
    Powerful but super friendly to work with
  • 42
    Fast development
  • 40
    Easy to understand documentation
  • 36
    Angular style syntax for the backend
  • 32
    NodeJS ecosystem
  • 31
    Typescript
  • 27
    Its easy to understand since it follows angular syntax
  • 18
    Good architecture
  • 13
    Integrates with Narwhal Extensions
  • 12
    Typescript makes it well integrated in vscode
  • 8
    Graphql support easy
  • 7
    Agnosticism
  • 5
    Easily integrate with others external extensions
  • 1
    Official courses

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Cons of Koa
Cons of NestJS
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 10
      Difficult to debug
    • 10
      User base is small. Less help on Stackoverflow
    • 5
      Angular-like architecture
    • 3
      Updates with breaking changes
    • 3
      Javascript
    • 1
      Frontend in backend
    • 1
      Unstable

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is Koa?

    Koa aims to be a smaller, more expressive, and more robust foundation for web applications and APIs. Through leveraging generators Koa allows you to ditch callbacks and greatly increase error-handling. Koa does not bundle any middleware.

    What is NestJS?

    Nest is a framework for building efficient, scalable Node.js server-side applications. It uses progressive JavaScript, is built with TypeScript (preserves compatibility with pure JavaScript) and combines elements of OOP (Object Oriented Programming), FP (Functional Programming), and FRP (Functional Reactive Programming). Under the hood, Nest makes use of Express, but also, provides compatibility with a wide range of other libraries, like e.g. Fastify, allowing for easy use of the myriad third-party plugins which are available.

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    What companies use Koa?
    What companies use NestJS?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Koa or NestJS.
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    What tools integrate with Koa?
    What tools integrate with NestJS?

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    What are some alternatives to Koa and NestJS?
    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%.
    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.
    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.
    Flask
    Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind.
    Django REST framework
    It is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.
    See all alternatives