There is no reason to explain, why JavaScript frameworks have become the most popular tools for building interactive web apps. The set of framework types is growing constantly and each developer faces the challenge to find out which is the most proper one. The same with libraries – choosing the best one takes a lot of time and powers. So today we are going to compare as well as indicate pros and cons of AngularJS framework and ReactJS library. The first one, AngularJS, is well known since it was released in 2009 and holds TOP rates until now, whereas the dark horse ReactJS by Facebook unexpectedly began to grow in popularity with the speed of a thousand gazelles.
ReactJS was introduced to IT society in 2013, now this library is normally used in USA, Canada, Australia, and EU. By using virtual DOM, this agile tool allows to update just modified elements, without refreshing the whole page, it’s irreplaceable when you deal with a high loaded data. On the other hand, we can’t deny Angular directive’s usability, which makes the development of templates much easier. Nevertheless, let’s try to structure all pros and cons of both JavaScript tools, to get the objective assessment.
Architecture
AngularJS is a complex structure with a diverse variety of services, controllers, directives and other components, which helps to provide maximum functionality. In the process of the framework development, developers have settled up their vision of an ideal application structure. So if you follow the rules, everything’s going like clockwork, but any deviation from the very architecture will cause a number of complications, that will certainly influence on the development procedure.
The opposite thing has implemented by ReactJS inventors, they build a number of architecture options, so developers could choose tools on their own peril. The code, written in React is simple and structured (but shortness isn’t it’s forte). But we have a nice bonus – lazy loading of components, that really accelerates work. Also, React has it’s own application architecture Flux for creating web-apps on the Client’s side
Data binding
AngularJS adapts and extends the traditional HTML, thus providing double-sided binding of dynamic content data. Code lengths minimize this gives us an opportunity to synchronize model and presentation automatically. In this way, framework, that was kindly presented to us by Google company, declines the role of DOM-manipulation. It is much easier to test the code. In 2012 Google Chrome extended the Developer Tool, by adding Batarang plugin, so now debugging and profiling of web-applications is much easier, also.
Unlikely it’s opponent, React uses one-way data binding. This makes the conceptual basis, it is always clear from which place and in which condition arrived modified data. In 2015 React got native library ReactJS Native for mobile apps development under IOS and Android.
Performance
Despite the short code of Angular, there still may appear some bugs while processing massive data sheets. The reason – double-sided data binding., each element requires its own processor. In the result, the more data of such kind – the lower performance will be.
React uses DOM to process data. It structures the list of changes and strictly follow it, without changing other elements. So for processing Big Data, this tool rather matches. Gain your points for performance, React!
Bottom line
For working with a high loaded data, ReactJS deserves to be a leader it loads information much faster because of ability to refresh only changed elements. Plus it works with templates and it is not necessary to follow it’s architecture strictly. But if we talk about functionality, Angular wins the field. It’s templates – HTML code, extended with its own elements and attributes. A really huge variety of turnkey solutions is available. To its advantages we may definitely add the shortcode because of the declarative style it’s two or even three times shorter than pure JavaScript. Think that the QA specialist will be really thankful for this.
To resume, both competitors, as AngularJS, as ReactJS have their strong points. So it’s necessary to analyze all nuances of the project, that you are going to implement, to be sure that you have chosen the proper one.
