A Web Development Framework refers to a structure used to develop web applications. The framework comprises a set of tools and resources to build your application faster. The framework eases the development work by providing a foundation to build a content management system. It provides libraries and functions that can help to develop applications instead of writing the code from scratch.
There are many frameworks available to develop web applications. A web application has two parts – front end and back-end. While front end refers to interactive components on the website, back end refers to database and storage. There are frameworks available for both the front end and back-end development. You can pick the right one by weighing the pros and cons.
Backend Framework
Laravel
Laravel is a PHP framework and is suitable for developers who have knowledge in HTML, Core PHP, and Advance PHP. The advantage of a PHP framework is that it allows rapid development of web applications. Laravel is a free, open-source framework that provides functions for caching, session and authentication. It provides a secured framework and helps to protect the application from malware and security threats.
Express
Express is a NodeJS framework that can help in developing server-side web applications. The advantages of this framework is it is free, open-source, simple, flexible and scalable and can develop web applications faster. Express is used by IBM and Uber.
Django
Django is a MVC framework that uses Python for rapid web development. This framework is free and open source. It is used by Google, Youtube and Instagram. The main advantage of this framework is that it comes with batteries included features that provide authentication, URL routing, and messaging features. Django’s performance keeps increasing and it provides an online forum and discussion group that can help in troubleshooting.
Rails
Ruby on Rails is an extremely efficient framework. It is used to develop applications 10 times faster than java framework. This framework is a friendly and supportive framework for beginners.
Applications developed using this framework include Airbnb and Shopify.
Spring
Spring is a Java framework. It is often considered a lightweight framework as it uses the Plain Old Java Object (POJO). It provides modularity allowing developers to choose packages and classes of their choice. The downside is that the spring framework has 2400 classes which might be complicated for the developer. This framework requires developers to have XML knowledge.
Frontend Framework
Angular
Angular is Typescript based framework provided by Google. It is used to develop high-performance web applications for both mobile and web platforms. It is ideally used to build complex applications and considered superior among other Javascript frameworks. Angular has lots of handy tools and features like static typing, interfaces, namespaces, and classes which make development process faster and easier. There are some challenges in using the Angular framework. As Angular is built using TypeScript, the developers need to be familiar with Typescript which is a superset of Javascript.
React JS
React JS is not exactly a framework but a front end library developed by Facebook. It is used to develop both client or server-side.
React is a Javascript framework developed by Facebook. It is the wide choice of developers to build an interactive user interface and single page web applications. The advantages of using React is it is open source and has an active community. It is a Javascript library and supports code reusability and one side data binding.
Bootstrap
Bootstrap is a front end framework used to build responsive web and mobile-friendly websites. This open-source framework by Twitter uses HTML, CSS, and Javascript. This framework has good community support and provides continual fixes and releases. It offers templates, WordPress themes, and plugins that help to develop dynamic web pages faster.
Ember
Ember is among the best Javascript framework and it is gaining popularity as it gets updated with new features and releases. It is widely used by developers to build single-page web applications. It is used by Google, Microsoft and Netflix. It uses MVC architecture and has lots of features to increase developers’ productivity. It is the heaviest framework and not suitable for smaller projects.
Backbone
Backbone is a frontend Javascript framework used to build client-side applications. Backbone library provides the functionality to build a design with fewer lines of code. It is a free open source library that provides views, models, and events to build an application.
In short, a development framework can ease the work for developers and help to speed the development process.