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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Microframeworks
  4. Microframeworks
  5. FeathersJS vs GraphQL

FeathersJS vs GraphQL

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

FeathersJS
FeathersJS
Stacks162
Followers341
Votes70
GitHub Stars15.2K
Forks793
GraphQL
GraphQL
Stacks34.9K
Followers28.1K
Votes309

FeathersJS vs GraphQL: What are the differences?

# Introduction

Key differences between FeathersJS and GraphQL:

1. **Query Language and Execution**: FeathersJS uses its own query language while GraphQL comes with its query language which allows clients to request only the data they need, reducing over-fetching of data.
   
2. **Real-time and Subscriptions**: FeathersJS natively supports real-time functionality through WebSocket, while GraphQL requires additional protocols like GraphQL subscriptions for real-time updates.
   
3. **Backend Development Workflow**: FeathersJS provides a structured backend development workflow with built-in services and hooks for common functionalities, whereas GraphQL is mainly concerned with fetching and manipulating data at the API level.
   
4. **Learning Curve and Adoption**: FeathersJS follows a more traditional RESTful approach to API development, making it easier for developers familiar with REST, while GraphQL requires understanding of its schema, types, and resolvers, leading to a steeper learning curve for beginners.
   
5. **Data Fetching Efficiency**: GraphQL enables clients to request exactly the needed data through its schema, reducing multiple API calls for related data, whereas FeathersJS may require multiple API calls to fetch related data in a traditional RESTful approach.
   
6. **Client-Side Flexibility**: GraphQL allows clients to define their data requirements in the query, giving them more flexibility and control over the responses they receive, compared to FeathersJS where the server defines the data structure.

In Summary, the key differences between FeathersJS and GraphQL lie in their query languages, real-time capabilities, development workflows, learning curves, data fetching efficiency, and client-side flexibility.

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Detailed Comparison

FeathersJS
FeathersJS
GraphQL
GraphQL

Feathers is a real-time, micro-service web framework for NodeJS that gives you control over your data via RESTful resources, sockets and flexible plug-ins.

GraphQL is a data query language and runtime designed and used at Facebook to request and deliver data to mobile and web apps since 2012.

-
Hierarchical;Product-centric;Client-specified queries;Backwards Compatible;Structured, Arbitrary Code;Application-Layer Protocol;Strongly-typed;Introspective
Statistics
GitHub Stars
15.2K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
793
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
162
Stacks
34.9K
Followers
341
Followers
28.1K
Votes
70
Votes
309
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 12
    Real-time
  • 7
    Choose any ORM
  • 7
    Datastore Agnostic
  • 6
    Flexible Plugins
  • 5
    Choose Socketio or Primus
Pros
  • 75
    Schemas defined by the requests made by the user
  • 63
    Will replace RESTful interfaces
  • 62
    The future of API's
  • 49
    The future of databases
  • 12
    Self-documenting
Cons
  • 4
    Hard to migrate from GraphQL to another technology
  • 4
    More code to type.
  • 2
    Takes longer to build compared to schemaless.
  • 1
    No built in security
  • 1
    N+1 fetch problem
Integrations
Node.js
Node.js
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to FeathersJS, GraphQL?

ExpressJS

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.

Django REST framework

Django REST framework

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

Sails.js

Sails.js

Sails is designed to mimic the MVC pattern of frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the requirements of modern apps: data-driven APIs with scalable, service-oriented architecture.

Sinatra

Sinatra

Sinatra is a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort.

Lumen

Lumen

Laravel Lumen is a stunningly fast PHP micro-framework for building web applications with expressive, elegant syntax. We believe development must be an enjoyable, creative experience to be truly fulfilling. Lumen attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as routing, database abstraction, queueing, and caching.

Slim

Slim

Slim is easy to use for both beginners and professionals. Slim favors cleanliness over terseness and common cases over edge cases. Its interface is simple, intuitive, and extensively documented — both online and in the code itself.

Fastify

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%.

Falcon

Falcon

Falcon is a minimalist WSGI library for building speedy web APIs and app backends. We like to think of Falcon as the Dieter Rams of web frameworks.

hapi

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.

TypeORM

TypeORM

It supports both Active Record and Data Mapper patterns, unlike all other JavaScript ORMs currently in existence, which means you can write high quality, loosely coupled, scalable, maintainable applications the most productive way.

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