Apache Cordova vs Meteor

Overview

Meteor

Stacks1.9K

Followers1.8K

Votes1.7K

GitHub Stars44.8K

Forks5.3K

Apache Cordova

Stacks686

Followers892

Votes218

GitHub Stars955

Forks345

Apache Cordova vs Meteor: What are the differences?

Introduction: Apache Cordova and Meteor are two popular technologies used for mobile app development and web development, respectively. While both serve the purpose of creating cross-platform applications, they have key differences that make them suitable for specific use cases.

Language used: Apache Cordova allows developers to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for creating mobile applications, making it ideal for web developers familiar with these languages. On the other hand, Meteor uses JavaScript throughout the entire stack, making it a full-stack framework suitable for those who prefer a consistent language for both client-side and server-side development.
Data synchronization: Apache Cordova does not provide built-in support for data synchronization across devices, which may require developers to implement their solutions for syncing data. In contrast, Meteor comes with built-in support for real-time data synchronization, enabling developers to easily handle data changes across multiple clients in real-time.
Community and ecosystem: Apache Cordova has a large community and extensive plugin ecosystem, allowing developers to leverage various plugins for additional functionalities in their mobile applications. On the other hand, Meteor has a smaller but active community, with a focus on building real-time web applications, providing specific packages and libraries tailored for such applications.
Client-server communication: Apache Cordova primarily focuses on client-side development, requiring developers to set up custom server-side solutions for handling data and business logic. In contrast, Meteor simplifies client-server communication by providing a seamless integration between the client and server, making it easier for developers to build real-time applications with data synchronization capabilities.
Build and deployment: When using Apache Cordova, developers need to compile their code for different platforms, which can be a time-consuming process. Meteor, on the other hand, simplifies the build and deployment process by providing a single command to build and deploy applications to various platforms, streamlining the development workflow.

In Summary, Apache Cordova is more suitable for developers looking to create cross-platform mobile applications using web technologies, while Meteor is preferred for building real-time web applications with seamless client-server communication and data synchronization capabilities.

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CLI (Node.js)

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Advice on Meteor, Apache Cordova

Aleksandr

Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft at Microsoft-365

Dec 23, 2019

Review

What is `Proguard`?

ProGuard is the most popular optimizer for Java bytecode. It makes your Java and Android applications up to 90% smaller and up to 20% faster. ProGuard also provides minimal protection against reverse engineering by obfuscating the names of classes, fields and methods.

How to use it in `Cordova` app?

I didn't find any plugins for it. So I've implemented it by myself and shared it on GitHub.

Feel free to use!

119k views119k

Comments

Aleksandr

Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft at Microsoft-365

Dec 23, 2019

Needs advice

I've done some Hybrid Mobile apps with both technologies Apache Cordova and React Native and described my experience in my blog.

In a few words, I would suggest to use each technology in accordance what what is your current code base and what do you want to achieve.

React Native is a great option if you need that extra edge in performance with multi-threading and native UI rendering. Or you already have a web app based on React which you want to port to mobile.

On the other hand, if you have an existing web application code and you want to reuse some or all, including the ability to use web third-party libraries, then Cordova is the best option.

429k views429k

Comments

Carl-Erik

Jan 23, 2020

Decided

This basically came down to two things: performance on compute-heavy tasks and a need for good tooling. We used to have a Meteor based Node.js application which worked great for RAD and getting a working prototype in a short time, but we felt pains trying to scale it, especially when doing anything involving crunching data, which Node sucks at. We also had bad experience with tooling support for doing large scale refactorings in Javascript compared to the best-in-class tools available for Java (IntelliJ). Given the heavy domain and very involved logic we wanted good tooling support to be able to do great refactorings that are just not possible in Javascript. Java is an old warhorse, but it performs fantastically and we have not regretted going down this route, avoiding "enterprise" smells and going as lightweight as we can, using Jdbi instead of Persistence API, a homegrown Actor Model library for massive concurrency, etc ...

374k views374k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Meteor	Apache Cordova
A Meteor application is a mix of JavaScript that runs inside a client web browser, JavaScript that runs on the Meteor server inside a Node.js container, and all the supporting HTML fragments, CSS rules, and static assets.	Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Pure JavaScript;Live page updates;Clean, powerful data synchronization;Latency compensation;Hot Code Pushes;Sensitive code runs in a privileged environment;Fully self-contained application bundles; Interoperability;Smart Packages	Cross-platform (CLI) workflow;Platform-centered workflow;Hundreds of plugins
Statistics
GitHub Stars 44.8K	GitHub Stars 955
GitHub Forks 5.3K	GitHub Forks 345
Stacks 1.9K	Stacks 686
Followers 1.8K	Followers 892
Votes 1.7K	Votes 218
Pros & Cons
Pros 251 Real-time 200 Full stack, one language 183 Best app dev platform available today 155 Data synchronization 152 Javascript Cons 5 Does not scale well 4 Hard to debug issues on the server-side 4 Heavily CPU bound	Pros 48 Lots of plugins 35 JavaScript 26 Great community 25 Easy Development 18 Easy to learn Cons 2 No native performance 1 Hard to install 0 Hard to install
Integrations
AngularJS React MongoDB Node.js	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Meteor, Apache Cordova?

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Bower

Bower is a package manager for the web. It offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of front-end package management, while exposing the package dependency model via an API that can be consumed by a more opinionated build stack. There are no system wide dependencies, no dependencies are shared between different apps, and the dependency tree is flat.

Xamarin

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Elm

Writing HTML apps is super easy with elm-lang/html. Not only does it render extremely fast, it also quietly guides you towards well-architected code.

Julia

Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar to users of other technical computing environments. It provides a sophisticated compiler, distributed parallel execution, numerical accuracy, and an extensive mathematical function library.

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

Related Comparisons

Apache Cordova vs Meteor: What are the differences?

Language used: Apache Cordova allows developers to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for creating mobile applications, making it ideal for web developers familiar with these languages. On the other hand, Meteor uses JavaScript throughout the entire stack, making it a full-stack framework suitable for those who prefer a consistent language for both client-side and server-side development.
Data synchronization: Apache Cordova does not provide built-in support for data synchronization across devices, which may require developers to implement their solutions for syncing data. In contrast, Meteor comes with built-in support for real-time data synchronization, enabling developers to easily handle data changes across multiple clients in real-time.
Community and ecosystem: Apache Cordova has a large community and extensive plugin ecosystem, allowing developers to leverage various plugins for additional functionalities in their mobile applications. On the other hand, Meteor has a smaller but active community, with a focus on building real-time web applications, providing specific packages and libraries tailored for such applications.
Client-server communication: Apache Cordova primarily focuses on client-side development, requiring developers to set up custom server-side solutions for handling data and business logic. In contrast, Meteor simplifies client-server communication by providing a seamless integration between the client and server, making it easier for developers to build real-time applications with data synchronization capabilities.
Build and deployment: When using Apache Cordova, developers need to compile their code for different platforms, which can be a time-consuming process. Meteor, on the other hand, simplifies the build and deployment process by providing a single command to build and deploy applications to various platforms, streamlining the development workflow.

Apache Cordova vs Meteor

Overview