Top 10 Best Web Development Frameworks To Use
Web Development Frameworks are tools used to create a website or web application.
They are typically created and maintained by a single company and come with a collection of modules that you can use to develop a website. These modules include templating, caching, database connectivity, and other features.
The web is a platform where you can deliver content to people quickly and cheaply. Web development frameworks are the building blocks that allow developers to build and maintain websites.
By understanding these frameworks and how they can benefit you, you can choose the right one for your needs.
Web development has become one of the most important aspects of any business nowadays.
Most companies now use web development frameworks to develop their websites and applications. Companies use these best web development frameworks to build their websites and applications.
Best Backend Web Development Frameworks
1 – Express
It's a modern JavaScript framework that makes creating web applications easy and fast. Express makes writing scalable, robust, and secure web applications easy to use and has a clean, elegant syntax.
You can use Express to build a web application quickly without worrying about all the boilerplate code that comes with frameworks like jQuery.
Express was built quickly and securely, making it a potent tool for beginners and advanced Node JS development companies.
Express is based on Node.js, a high-performance asynchronous event-driven JavaScript server, and offers many of the same features as other well-known Node.js frameworks, including Socket.io.
There are many reasons why people choose Express as their go-to JavaScript web development framework:
- It's simple: You can use one of the many popular JavaScript libraries to do everything from templating to database access.
- Easy to use: The Express.js API is straightforward to work with, and the framework includes plenty of methods to make it easy to accomplish everyday tasks.
- It's extensible: Extensions are provided to extend the functionality of Express.
- It's a stable and secure platform: Express works well with any version of Node.js.
- You can quickly deploy your app to production, and the Express server environment is highly robust.
- Express is open source, which means it's free, and the source code is available for anyone to download and examine.
Is Express: The Web Development Framework for You?
You should consider using Express if you want to create web applications that are:
- Fast
- Scalable
- Secure
- Open Source
- Extensible
- Flexible
There are so many great reasons to use Express that it's hard to know where to start. If you want to learn how to create a website, Express is probably your best bet.
If you want to build an application that will handle large amounts of traffic, Express will be your best friend. And if you're looking to create an API, Express can be the perfect solution.
Why Choose Express: The Web Development Framework?
- If you want to create a fast, secure, scalable, and extensible web application, you'll love Express.
- If you're looking to create a web application that you'll be able to reuse and modify, use Express.
- If you want to build an application that can quickly scale to handle lots of traffic, choose Express.
Use Express if you're looking for a robust, secure, open-source JavaScript framework.
2 – Django
Django is a Python-based framework that makes it easy for web developers to build unique applications.
With Django, you don't need to be a computer programmer. The framework has many built-in features that allow developers to get straight to work, including editing and managing project files, setting up databases, writing tests, and even deploying code.
Django makes it very easy for anyone to develop a fantastic app without requiring any technical expertise or experience. Django does the hard work for you. This means that with Django, there's no need to learn how to code to build web applications. It's super easy!
Some of the fantastic features of Django include the following:
- A model-view-controller (MVC) pattern with an intuitive admin interface that allows you to add and edit data quickly
- An object-relational mapping (ORM) system that will enable you to use relational databases with Python
- Database migrations and database schema changes are managed automatically
- A REST API is built-in, allowing you to expose your application's data to other systems quickly.
You can extend Django's functionality by downloading third-party libraries, such as the JWT library for authenticating users and the MongoDB driver for accessing data from your databases.
Django is an excellent choice for building your next web app. It has been used to create apps for various projects, from professional eCommerce websites to mobile apps.
3 – Rails
Rails is a framework designed to make developing web applications more accessible. Like many other frameworks out there, it focuses on three things:
- MVC architecture
- A RESTful API
- Rails.js
Rails Architecture
In the MVC architecture, the model is the data, the controller is the logic, and the view is the presentation. We use Rails' models, views, and controllers to build a web application.
A RESTful API is a standard protocol to communicate with services over HTTP. A RESTful API has four components: the resource, the representation, the collection, and the links.
The resource is the data the API responds to. The representation is the way the data is returned. The collection is the data grouped, and the links are the ways to access the resources.
Rails.js is a JavaScript-based framework that provides the core libraries for building web applications. This tool is potent because you can use any programming language to develop your web application.
Are There Any Benefits to Using Rails?
The benefits of using Rails include:
- Simple
- RESTful API
- Flexible
- Active Model
- Object Oriented
- Relatively easy to learn
- Easier to understand
- More mature
4 – Laravel
Laravel is a full-stack web application framework built for PHP. The name Laravel comes from the company's founder, Taylor Otwell, who used Lara as his middle name. The framework was initially released in 2008. The framework aims to simplify web development and make it more intuitive.
Why Choose Laravel?
Laravel makes developing web applications more accessible and faster. The framework does this by making it easy to do everyday tasks such as handling data storage, caching, authentication, authorisation, routing, validation, and internationalisation.
It also has a strong community. Its main forum is located at https://laracasts.com. The site hosts many tutorials and videos covering the framework and its use. You can even take courses on the framework at Laracasts.
It is used in many large applications. It powers over 20 million websites and is used by companies like Netflix, Airbnb, and Dropbox. Over 10,000 businesses also use the framework.
How Does Laravel Compare To Other Frameworks?
It can be challenging to choose between frameworks. If you are familiar with other frameworks, you should compare them to Laravel. However, if you are new to web development, you can choose Laravel without knowing any other framework.
It provides a basic starter kit. The starter kit includes a few files and is a great way to start. It also comes with a basic set of tools and features required for most websites.
It is object-oriented. Object-oriented programming is a style of programming that allows developers to create modular software. This will enable developers to break code into smaller pieces and reuse them. To reuse code, it must be grouped into classes.
You can access it remotely. Many websites are now being hosted on cloud servers. These servers allow developers to access their websites remotely through the internet. Cloud servers are accessed using a web browser rather than locally.
Laravel makes it easy to build a multi-tenant application. This means that a single website can host multiple users. This is usually done by separating the code used to handle the individual users.
You can easily add third-party libraries. The framework is easy to use and provides many standard features. As a result, it is easy to customise.
Laravel is very secure. It includes many security features required to protect your website and data. The framework is easy to deploy. It includes features that make setting up the application on your servers easier.
5 – Spring
Spring is a web application framework developed by the VMware Team in 2004. It's available in a wide variety of programming languages.
Spring is an open-source framework. The framework supports web services, transactions, security, and internationalisation. Spring supports the latest programming languages, including Java, Groovy, and JavaScript.
Spring Framework has been used in over 50,000 applications in over 100 countries. This framework is an essential component for modern web applications.
What Is the Best Spring Framework?
The top features of Spring Framework include:
- Security
- Support for Hibernate
- REST
- WebSocket
- Transaction
- Transaction Support
Security is the core feature of any framework. In this case, the security is based on JDBC or the Java standard API for authentication and authorisation. In addition to security, Spring Security includes support for essential access control and authentication.
In addition to security, Spring Framework supports the JPA. The JPA is an object-relational mapping that connects Java objects with the database. Spring Framework supports the JPA via the Hibernate ORM.
Spring Framework is the obvious choice for developing a REST or web service. It provides a powerful RestTemplate that enables you to create a complete REST client.
Finally, the Spring Framework is designed to be compatible with the JMS API. As a result, you can use the JMS API directly with Spring. The Spring JMS library is based on ActiveMQ.
Frontend Javascript Web Development Frameworks
6 – Angular
Angular is a cross-platform, open-source framework built on web technologies to create large-scale page applications.
AngularJS is a JavaScript-based framework created by Google to simplify the development of single-page applications.
AngularJS was designed to use web applications' MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. All AngularJS components must communicate through a Model and a View.
AngularJS also follows the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) pattern and is a complete solution to build single-page applications that are highly interactive.
Google initially developed AngularJS, and the company still maintains it.
Features of Angular:
- Responsive
- Highly interactive
- Highly extensible
- High Performance
- Easy to Learn
- Easy to Use
- Complete Solution
Angular comes with an extensive set of modules that you can use to build any application. It is a perfect fit for mobile and web applications.
AngularJS creates responsive, fast, scalable, and robust applications.
It is the best option for developing single-page applications as it follows the MVC (model-view-controller) architecture and the MVVM (model-view-ViewModel) pattern.
The core of this framework is its dependency injection feature, which makes it very easy to test and develop code.
This framework is also highly extensible, allowing you to build your app with tools such as Node.js, Python, PHP, Java, etc.
Another significant advantage of using AngularJS is that it is entirely free of cost, unlike other frameworks that charge thousands of dollars for their licenses.
7 – React
React is a library for building user interfaces.
React is a popular framework for creating user interfaces in web development. If you've used a JavaScript library, chances are you've encountered React. Its creator, Facebook, uses React on its website, mobile apps, and platform for developing mobile and desktop applications. React has become the de facto standard for building user interfaces.
React was first released as a JavaScript library in 2013. It was initially called Fluxus, and it was designed to help developers quickly build websites and mobile apps.
After a few years of improvements and additions, React officially became an open-source project in 2015. React allows you to create interactive user interfaces with no programming experience. It takes care of rendering UI elements, event handling, and other features required for a website or app to function correctly.
How Does React Work?
React works by rendering an interface. When you click on something on the page, it generates a list of components representing that element on the screen. Each component receives the data it needs from a parent component and renders itself according to the data received.
In React, every component receives a single input called a “props” object containing the data required to render. React uses the props object to determine how to display a component and what information to present.
The best way to understand this is to look at an example. Suppose you want to add a button to your site but don't know how yet. A simple way to add the button to your site would be to add it directly to the HTML document. But if you wanted to customise the button's appearance, you'd need to add CSS to make it look nice.
With React, you can add a button component to your page without worrying about how it looks. React is smart enough to determine what you want and how to render it. So, instead of adding code to create a button, you make a Button component that receives the data needed to render it.
This makes your life easier, as you don't need to write code that creates a button. You can create the Button component, and the rest happens automatically.
Here's how it works. In the example below, the Button component receives an ID value from the props object (which is passed in by the parent component). That ID value matches the button in the HTML document.
When React matches the button in the document with the Button component, it knows how to display the component and what information to provide it. The button component looks at the prop's object and figures out what and how to show it.
The Button component is used inside a React application, so it also receives a reference to the application's primary container, which it uses to update the DOM. The application's main container passes the props to the component, which updates the DOM with the correct data.
8 – Vue
Vue is an open-source, progressive JavaScript framework with a slight learning curve and a simple and easy-to-learn syntax. Vue was built with two key goals:
- To be the most straightforward frontend framework in the world.
- To enable developers to build great applications quickly.
A team of skilled engineers with decades of experience building user interfaces created Vue. They wanted to develop a framework that's easy to learn, use, and powerful enough to meet the needs of even the most demanding projects.
It's a framework that you can use for both sizeable enterprise-grade web apps and complex single-page applications (SPA).
Features include:
- Lightweight framework.
- Easy to learn, easy to use.
- Highly customisable.
- Flexible structure.
- Well documented.
- Cross-platform compatibility.
Why Vue?
Vue is a lightweight and modern framework with a flexible structure. It's a robust framework that's easy to learn and use and powerful enough to meet the needs of even the most demanding projects.
Developers can leverage a Vue.js admin framework to quickly build robust and customisable administrative interfaces for their Vue applications.
The following features are just some reasons why Vue is a fantastic choice for developing web applications.
- It is easier to get started than other frameworks. There are many different frameworks, most of which are more complex and complicated. Vue, on the other hand, is straightforward to pick up.
- Learn as you go. When you start using Vue, you'll notice how easy it is to build your first app. Unlike other frameworks, Vue requires no prior knowledge of JavaScript engineers. All you need to know is HTML and CSS.
- Developers can work and develop in a fast and efficient way. Vue uses less memory as a lightweight framework than other frameworks, such as React and Angular.
- Being a progressive framework, Vue provides support for functional programming. Being a fully open-source framework, you'll have access to the code as soon as it's available, giving you more control over the development process.
- Excellent documentation and a strong community. Vue has a great documentation system, making it easy to use and learn. It's the best documentation in the market, with videos and examples to help you through the learning process.
9 – Ember
Ember is an open-source JavaScript library for developing user interfaces. It was built to address shortcomings in other web development frameworks such as AngularJS and Backbone. It provides data binding, robust routing, two-way data binding, computed properties, observables, events, data-observable, and more.
Ember is compatible with Node.js. In addition to its API, it comes with many modules from other open-source libraries such as Express, Jade, Handlebars, and Mustache. It also integrates with popular third-party libraries such as Moment.js, Socket.io, and Grunt. Ember is available under the MIT license.
Ember is different from other JavaScript web development frameworks in that it is designed to work with an MVC (Model–View–Controller) architecture. It is also designed to work well with modern JavaScript.
Ember is being used by some of the largest companies in the world, including LinkedIn, Airbnb, GitHub, Uber, and Netflix. Ember has been used to create products, including Instacart and OpenTable.
A couple of advantages of using Ember include:
- It's easy to learn and start using.
- You get to know Ember by using it.
- Ember is simple.
- It's robust and highly extensible.
Ember differs from other JavaScript frameworks in that it is not intended to solve all the problems of developing a large-scale application. Instead, Ember is a framework designed to address some of the shortcomings of existing frameworks and provide a solution for the unique needs of web applications.
10 – Backbone
Backbone is a JavaScript library that organises and structures the code for building dynamic websites and web applications. Many JavaScript frameworks like AngularJS, Ember, and React use it.
The core of the Backbone is the Model-View-ViewModel pattern. This pattern lets you think of data, logic, and presentation in separate layers.
A Model is simply a set of data. In the simplest case, it could be an object with data fields accessed via simple JavaScript syntax. Models can be nested, allowing the developer to separate data from presentation and logic.
A View is a UI component that displays the data in a Model. Views are typically associated with a single Model and can often be reused across multiple projects.
Views are usually designed in CSS to make them reusable and to keep the code organised. A View also defines how the data is displayed using HTML and JavaScript.
A ViewModel is a representation of the state of a Model. In most cases, the ViewModel represents the current view of the model. It encapsulates the logic needed to update the UI based on changes to the model.
The developer often defines the ViewModel, which is often used to encapsulate the communication between the view and the controller.
A Controller is a glue that connects a View to the model. Controllers are responsible for updating the model and communicating the updated model to the viewer.
The Backbone documentation contains examples that will help you get started quickly. You can also download a template project and see the framework in action.
Conclusion
Web development frameworks play a crucial role in the success of any web project. A great framework will save you time and money. It will also make it easy to manage to build your following website.
There are many different frameworks, but the two most popular are Bootstrap and AngularJS. These frameworks are so widely used that they are often combined with other tools like WordPress and jQuery.
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FAQs
What is a web development framework?
A web development framework is a set of tools that allows you to develop websites using a specific programming language. For example, there are PHP frameworks, Ruby on Rails frameworks, etc.
Which framework is best?
That depends on what kind of applications you want to build. For example, if you're going to build a blog, you might want to use WordPress. To create a shopping cart, you might want to use Magento.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a web development framework?
Using a web development framework has several advantages. First, learning code is more accessible since you know the basic structure. Second, it is easier to maintain. Third, it makes it easier to collaborate.
Is there a correct answer to which framework is best?
No. Each framework has its advantages and disadvantages. It's up to you to decide which one you prefer.
What is the difference between a content management system and a web development framework?
A content management system is software that allows you to manage a website. A web development framework is software that helps you build a website.