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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Microframeworks
  4. Microframeworks
  5. ExpressJS vs Polymer

ExpressJS vs Polymer

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

ExpressJS
ExpressJS
Stacks35.1K
Followers24.0K
Votes1.6K
Polymer
Polymer
Stacks557
Followers463
Votes122
GitHub Stars22.1K
Forks2.0K

ExpressJS vs Polymer: What are the differences?

What is ExpressJS? Sinatra inspired web development framework for node.js -- insanely fast, flexible, and simple. 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.

What is Polymer? A new library built on top of Web Components, designed to leverage the evolving web platform on modern browsers. Polymer is a new type of library for the web, designed to leverage the existing browser infrastructure to provide the encapsulation and extendability currently only available in JS libraries. Polymer is based on a set of future technologies, including Shadow DOM, Custom Elements and Model Driven Views. Currently these technologies are implemented as polyfills or shims, but as browsers adopt these features natively, the platform code that drives Polymer evacipates, leaving only the value-adds.

ExpressJS and Polymer are primarily classified as "Microframeworks (Backend)" and "Front-End Frameworks" tools respectively.

"Simple" is the primary reason why developers consider ExpressJS over the competitors, whereas "Web components" was stated as the key factor in picking Polymer.

ExpressJS and Polymer are both open source tools. It seems that ExpressJS with 44.6K GitHub stars and 7.48K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Polymer with 21.1K GitHub stars and 2K GitHub forks.

Twitter, Intuit, and OpenGov are some of the popular companies that use ExpressJS, whereas Polymer is used by Telemetry, AX Semantics, and USERcycle. ExpressJS has a broader approval, being mentioned in 854 company stacks & 788 developers stacks; compared to Polymer, which is listed in 42 company stacks and 32 developer stacks.

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Advice on ExpressJS, Polymer

Gericke
Gericke

Jul 27, 2020

Needs adviceon.NET Core.NET CoreJavaScriptJavaScriptReactReact

Hi,

I am looking into solutions for reusable components for an existing #MVC project which is build on .NET Core. Currently some functionality is being reuses via JavaScript. I have React experience so I know I can create React components and then reference it on the MVC app. The only problem is I do not know the full extent of it as the current app uses a lot of 3rd party libraries, not sure how that will effect React components. I am currently looking into WebComponents which is also another way for creating reusable components and it is compatible with any JavaScript library based on what I have seen on the website. Also to take in consideration that it should cause a re-write of the system.

So my question is, to future-proof reusable components, which will be best React or Web Components? And which will be more reliable to use with 3rd party libraries?

49.1k views49.1k
Comments
Tony
Tony

Oct 21, 2020

Review

I personally like using a wholly JS stack, with TypeORM + MySql/Postgres over MongoDb + Mongoose because TypeOrm's Typescript support is much stronger. After developing large projects with Typescript, there is no going back to regular javascript (typings help catch a LOT of errors / maintains data structure !)

Sticking with a javascript stack will allow you to share certain aspects of your application between front and backend. For example: one particularly common feature is to validate API call data and form entry data. Both of these are the same data shape typically (aside from pagination, metadata, etc), and can benefit from a single schema for validation. I use Yup to define this schema, then in the front and back end I can utilize this definition instead of rewriting the same logic in two different languages.

Same goes for certain utility functions such as data structure typings, decryption, encryption, sanitizing inputs, formatting of data, and other utilities. No point of writing these in two languages when both frontend and backend will use them. It will also help reduce developer work load, due to less tests / code to work with.

The only thing you must ensure in your import chain the frontend never imports any secret variables or sensitive logic used by the backend, as that will get bundled into your application. All shared imports should be individual modules

If you want to go one step further, next.js is basically create react app with server side rendering (SSR). This would allow you to skip the annoying step of configuring separate backend and frontend build tools. Might be worth exploring depending on your skill level.

812 views812
Comments

Detailed Comparison

ExpressJS
ExpressJS
Polymer
Polymer

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.

Polymer is a new type of library for the web, designed to leverage the existing browser infrastructure to provide the encapsulation and extendability currently only available in JS libraries. Polymer is based on a set of future technologies, including Shadow DOM, Custom Elements and Model Driven Views. Currently these technologies are implemented as polyfills or shims, but as browsers adopt these features natively, the platform code that drives Polymer evacipates, leaving only the value-adds.

Robust routing;HTTP helpers (redirection, caching, etc);View system supporting 14+ template engines;Content negotiation;Focus on high performance;Executable for generating applications quickly;High test coverage
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
22.1K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
2.0K
Stacks
35.1K
Stacks
557
Followers
24.0K
Followers
463
Votes
1.6K
Votes
122
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 381
    Simple
  • 336
    Node.js
  • 244
    Javascript
  • 193
    High performance
  • 152
    Robust routing
Cons
  • 27
    Not python
  • 17
    Overrated
  • 14
    No multithreading
  • 9
    Javascript
  • 5
    Not fast
Pros
  • 52
    Web components
  • 30
    Material design
  • 14
    HTML
  • 13
    Components
  • 5
    Open source
Cons
  • 1
    Last version is like 2 years ago? that's totally rad
Integrations
Node.js
Node.js
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to ExpressJS, Polymer?

Bootstrap

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

Foundation

Foundation

Foundation is the most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world. You can quickly prototype and build sites or apps that work on any kind of device with Foundation, which includes layout constructs (like a fully responsive grid), elements and best practices.

Semantic UI

Semantic UI

Semantic empowers designers and developers by creating a shared vocabulary for UI.

Materialize

Materialize

A CSS Framework based on material design.

Material Design for Angular

Material Design for Angular

Material Design is a specification for a unified system of visual, motion, and interaction design that adapts across different devices. Our goal is to deliver a lean, lightweight set of AngularJS-native UI elements that implement the material design system for use in Angular SPAs.

Material-UI

Material-UI

Material UI is a library of React UI components that implements Google's Material Design.

Blazor

Blazor

Blazor is a .NET web framework that runs in any browser. You author Blazor apps using C#/Razor and HTML.

Quasar Framework

Quasar Framework

Build responsive Single Page Apps, SSR Apps, PWAs, Hybrid Mobile Apps and Electron Apps, all using the same codebase!, powered with Vue.

Nuxt.js

Nuxt.js

Nuxt.js presets all the configuration needed to make your development of a Vue.js application enjoyable. You can use Nuxt.js for SSR, SPA, Static Generated, PWA and more.

Django REST framework

Django REST framework

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

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