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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Frameworks
  5. Laravel vs NestJS

Laravel vs NestJS

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Laravel
Laravel
Stacks28.7K
Followers23.7K
Votes3.9K
GitHub Stars82.6K
Forks24.6K
NestJS
NestJS
Stacks2.7K
Followers3.0K
Votes326
GitHub Stars73.3K
Forks8.1K

Laravel vs NestJS: What are the differences?

Laravel and NestJS are two popular frameworks used for backend development. Let's explore the key differences between them.

  1. Architecture: Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, which separates the application logic into three distinct components. On the other hand, NestJS adopts a modular and flexible approach using a combination of modules, controllers, and services, allowing for greater flexibility and scalability in large projects.

  2. Language: Laravel is written in PHP, a widely-used server-side scripting language. NestJS, on the other hand, is built on top of Node.js, a runtime environment that enables the development of scalable and high-performance server-side applications using JavaScript or TypeScript.

  3. Database Support: Laravel has excellent support for SQL databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite, among others. It also includes an ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) called Eloquent, which simplifies database interactions. In contrast, NestJS supports a wide range of databases, including SQL (through TypeORM) as well as NoSQL databases like MongoDB.

  4. Routing: Laravel provides a clean and intuitive routing system, allowing developers to define routes using a simple and expressive syntax. NestJS offers a similar routing system but enhances it with decorators and TypeScript decorators, making it more robust and type-safe.

  5. Testing Framework: Laravel includes a testing framework called PHPUnit, which allows developers to write and run tests for their applications. NestJS, on the other hand, relies on the Jest testing framework, which is known for its simplicity and speed.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Laravel has a large and vibrant community, with a vast collection of third-party packages and extensions available through the Laravel ecosystem. NestJS, being a relatively newer framework, has a growing community and a smaller ecosystem in comparison. However, both frameworks have active communities and provide extensive documentation and resources to support developers.

In summary, Laravel is written in PHP and follows the MVC architecture, NestJS is built on Node.js and emphasizes flexibility and scalability through its modular approach.

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Advice on Laravel, NestJS

washie
washie

Developer at Bytecom

Jun 14, 2020

Decided

i find python quite resourceful. given the bulk of libraries that python has and the trends of the tech i find django which runs on python to be the framework of choice to the upcoming web services and application. Laravel on the other hand which is powered by PHP is also quite resourceful and great for startups and common web applications.

758k views758k
Comments
Louai
Louai

Full Stack Web Developer

May 15, 2020

Needs adviceonNode.jsNode.jsTypeScriptTypeScriptExpressJSExpressJS

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

549k views549k
Comments
Mohammad
Mohammad

Oct 28, 2019

Needs adviceonNode.jsNode.jsLaravelLaravelPHPPHP

I want to create a video sharing service like Youtube, which users can use to upload and watch videos. I prefer to use Vue.js for front-end. What do you suggest for the back-end? @{Node.js}|tool:1011| or @{Laravel}|tool:992| ( @{PHP}|tool:991| ) I need a good performance with high speed, and the most important thing is the ability to handle user's requests if the site's traffic increases. I want to create an algorithm that users who watch others videos earn points (randomly but in clear context) If you have anything else to improve, please let me know. For eg: If you prefer React to Vue.js. Thanks in advance

309k views309k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Laravel
Laravel
NestJS
NestJS

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.

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.

Template Engine; MVC Architecture Support; Eloquent ORM (Object Relational Mapping); Security; Artisan; Libraries & Modular; Database Migration System; Unit-Testing
Extensible - Gives you true flexibility by allowing use of any other libraries thanks to modular architecture.; Versatile - An adaptable ecosystem that is a fully-fledged backbone for all kinds of server-side applications.; Progressive - Takes advantage of latest JavaScript features, bringing design patterns and mature solutions to node.js world.
Statistics
GitHub Stars
82.6K
GitHub Stars
73.3K
GitHub Forks
24.6K
GitHub Forks
8.1K
Stacks
28.7K
Stacks
2.7K
Followers
23.7K
Followers
3.0K
Votes
3.9K
Votes
326
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 555
    Clean architecture
  • 392
    Growing community
  • 370
    Composer friendly
  • 344
    Open source
  • 325
    The only framework to consider for php
Cons
  • 54
    PHP
  • 33
    Too many dependency
  • 23
    Slower than the other two
  • 17
    A lot of static method calls for convenience
  • 15
    Too many include
Pros
  • 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
Cons
  • 10
    Difficult to debug
  • 10
    User base is small. Less help on Stackoverflow
  • 5
    Angular-like architecture
  • 3
    Updates with breaking changes
  • 3
    Javascript
Integrations
PHP
PHP
Django
Django
CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter
CakePHP
CakePHP
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Laravel, NestJS?

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.

.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.

Phoenix Framework

Phoenix Framework

Phoenix is a framework for building HTML5 apps, API backends and distributed systems. Written in Elixir, you get beautiful syntax, productive tooling and a fast runtime.

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