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  1. Stackups
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  3. UI Components
  4. Javascript UI Libraries
  5. React.js Boilerplate vs Relay Framework

React.js Boilerplate vs Relay Framework

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Relay Framework
Relay Framework
Stacks214
Followers177
Votes1
GitHub Stars18.9K
Forks1.9K
React.js Boilerplate
React.js Boilerplate
Stacks402
Followers464
Votes18

React.js Boilerplate vs Relay Framework: What are the differences?

React.js Boilerplate: 🔥 Quick setup for performance orientated, offline-first React.js apps. Quick setup for new performance orientated, offline–first React.js applications featuring Redux, hot–reloading, PostCSS, react-router, ServiceWorker, AppCache, FontFaceObserver and Mocha; Relay Framework: A JavaScript Framework for Building Data-Driven React Applications, by Facebook. Never again communicate with your data store using an imperative API. Simply declare your data requirements using GraphQL and let Relay figure out how and when to fetch your data.

React.js Boilerplate and Relay Framework can be primarily classified as "Javascript UI Libraries" tools.

Some of the features offered by React.js Boilerplate are:

  • Using react-transform-hmr, your changes in the CSS and JS get reflected in the app instantly without refreshing the page. That means that the current application state persists even when you change something in the underlying code! For a very good explanation and demo, watch Dan Abramov himself talking about it at react-europe.
  • Redux is a much better implementation of a flux–like, unidirectional data flow. Redux makes actions composable, reduces the boilerplate code and makes hot–reloading possible in the first place. For a good overview of redux, check out the talk linked above or the official documentation!
  • Babel is a modular JavaScript transpiler that helps to use next generation JavaScript and more, like transformation for JSX, hot loading, error catching etc. Babel has a solid ecosystem of offical preset and plugins.

On the other hand, Relay Framework provides the following key features:

  • Build data driven apps
  • Declarative style
  • Mutate data on the client and server

React.js Boilerplate and Relay Framework are both open source tools. It seems that React.js Boilerplate with 25.8K GitHub stars and 5.36K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Relay Framework with 14.7K GitHub stars and 1.46K GitHub forks.

Lumeneo.com, STRV, and Code From Berlin are some of the popular companies that use React.js Boilerplate, whereas Relay Framework is used by Facebook, Inato, and Mathspace. React.js Boilerplate has a broader approval, being mentioned in 5 company stacks & 283 developers stacks; compared to Relay Framework, which is listed in 53 company stacks and 75 developer stacks.

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Detailed Comparison

Relay Framework
Relay Framework
React.js Boilerplate
React.js Boilerplate

Never again communicate with your data store using an imperative API. Simply declare your data requirements using GraphQL and let Relay figure out how and when to fetch your data.

Quick setup for new performance orientated, offline–first React.js applications featuring Redux, hot–reloading, PostCSS, react-router, ServiceWorker, AppCache, FontFaceObserver and Mocha.

Build data driven apps; Declarative style; Mutate data on the client and server
Using react-transform-hmr, your changes in the CSS and JS get reflected in the app instantly without refreshing the page. That means that the current application state persists even when you change something in the underlying code! For a very good explanation and demo, watch Dan Abramov himself talking about it at react-europe.;Redux is a much better implementation of a flux–like, unidirectional data flow. Redux makes actions composable, reduces the boilerplate code and makes hot–reloading possible in the first place. For a good overview of redux, check out the talk linked above or the official documentation!;Babel is a modular JavaScript transpiler that helps to use next generation JavaScript and more, like transformation for JSX, hot loading, error catching etc. Babel has a solid ecosystem of offical preset and plugins.;PostCSS is like Sass, but modular and capable of much more. PostCSS is, in essence, just a wrapper for plugins which exposes an easy to use, but very powerful API. While it is possible to replicate Sass features with PostCSS, PostCSS has an ecosystem of amazing plugins with functionalities Sass cannot even dream about having. See this talk for a short introduction to PostCSS.;Unit tests should be an important part of every web application developers toolchain. Mocha checks your application is working exactly how it should without you lifting a single finger. Congratulations, you just won a First Class ticket to world domination, fasten your seat belt please!;react-router is used for routing in this boilerplate. Using the new, and currently unreleased, 1.0 version, react-router makes routing really easy to do and takes care of a lot of the work. Since the version is not officially out yet, the documentation is not fully finished, but by far finished enough to work for most needs.;ServiceWorker and AppCache make it possible to use your application offline. As soon as the website has been opened once, it is cached and available without a network connection. See this talk for an explanation of the ServiceWorker used in this boilerplate. manifest.json is specifically for Chrome on Android. Users can add the website to the homescreen and use it like a native app!
Statistics
GitHub Stars
18.9K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
1.9K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
214
Stacks
402
Followers
177
Followers
464
Votes
1
Votes
18
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 1
    Relay Modern
Pros
  • 4
    Amazing developer experience
  • 4
    Nice tooling
  • 3
    Great documentation
  • 3
    Easy offline first applications
  • 3
    Easy setup
Integrations
No integrations available
React
React
Mocha
Mocha
React Router
React Router
Redux
Redux
PostCSS
PostCSS

What are some alternatives to Relay Framework, React.js Boilerplate?

jQuery

jQuery

jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.

AngularJS

AngularJS

AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.

React

React

Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.

Vue.js

Vue.js

It is a library for building interactive web interfaces. It provides data-reactive components with a simple and flexible API.

jQuery UI

jQuery UI

Whether you're building highly interactive web applications or you just need to add a date picker to a form control, jQuery UI is the perfect choice.

Svelte

Svelte

If you've ever built a JavaScript application, the chances are you've encountered – or at least heard of – frameworks like React, Angular, Vue and Ractive. Like Svelte, these tools all share a goal of making it easy to build slick interactive user interfaces. Rather than interpreting your application code at run time, your app is converted into ideal JavaScript at build time. That means you don't pay the performance cost of the framework's abstractions, or incur a penalty when your app first loads.

Flux

Flux

Flux is the application architecture that Facebook uses for building client-side web applications. It complements React's composable view components by utilizing a unidirectional data flow. It's more of a pattern rather than a formal framework, and you can start using Flux immediately without a lot of new code.

Famo.us

Famo.us

Famo.us is a free and open source JavaScript platform for building mobile apps and desktop experiences. What makes Famo.us unique is its JavaScript rendering engine and 3D physics engine that gives developers the power and tools to build native quality apps and animations using pure JavaScript.

Riot

Riot

Riot brings custom tags to all browsers. Think React + Polymer but with enjoyable syntax and a small learning curve.

Marko

Marko

Marko is a really fast and lightweight HTML-based templating engine that compiles templates to readable Node.js-compatible JavaScript modules, and it works on the server and in the browser. It supports streaming, async rendering and custom tags.

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