Express.js vs FeathersJS

Setting up a new Express project is very easy. It consists of installing a handful of libraries through NPM run a single npm install and everything is ready to go.

Express' extremely powerful routing API allows developers to do tasks ranging from building a REST API to building the routes for a simple web app and then take it to the next level by using route parameters and query strings.

With a little learning curve, it is a good choice for new NodeJS developers to get started quickly. Express boasts great, thorough documentation.

Node.js Foundation

Announcement here

The Node.js Foundation is a Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems.

Being a somewhat old Node.js web app framework and being one of the most widely used frameworks, Express.js has matured quite a lot during all that time. It's more stable than its competitors and a huge community backing it.

Express takes advantage of Node's NPM to distribute and install countless plugins made by third parties which solve almost anything a developer would want to do with Express.

It's by far the most popular framework for node.

Express has a big community with a lot of guides and tutorials written about it by developers that have been using it for quite some time.

You can easily add oAuth integration/social logins to your next web app without much hassle, using this authentication middleware for connect.

Very simple and fast.

If you have not already checked out the Express.js ecosystem of middleware, you should.

Feather can sync events happening in two different Node processes or even servers in real-time. For example: an event happens in server A, the user connected to server B is instantly notified of that event.

This is done through a central Redis or Mongo collection or through a websocket libraries' clustering library.

Through services, Feathers provides instant CRUD functionality, it also can easily expose a RESTful and real-time API through HTTP/HTTPS and websockets.

Since Feathers itself is built on top of Express (it's a thin wrapper over socket.io, primus and Express) and because of Feathers' highly modular nature, it's very easy to integrate Feathers in an existing Express project.

Feathers makes extensive use of modules (which are called Feathers services). These services work like ExpressJS middleware and can be used with app.use('/path', serviceObject).

Services help developers keep their applications modular and as minimal as possible, without any unnecessary libraries or bloat.

FeatherJS uses primus which is a universal wrapper for real-time frameworks. Through primus you can easily choose which socket transport you want to use.