When comparing Express.js vs ActFramework, the Slant community recommends Express.js for most people. In the question“What are the best web frameworks to create a web REST API?” Express.js is ranked 1st while ActFramework is ranked 20th. The most important reason people chose Express.js is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Setting up is very easy
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.
Pro Great routing API
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.
Pro Great for beginner Node.js programmers
With a little learning curve, it is a good choice for new NodeJS developers to get started quickly. Express boasts great, thorough documentation.
Pro Express.js is in the Node.js Foundation Incubator Program
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.
Pro Relatively mature
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.
Pro Support for a lot of plugins
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.
Pro Has the largest userbase
It's by far the most popular framework for node.
Pro Great supportive community
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.
Pro Good Oauth/Facebook integration with connect module
You can easily add oAuth integration/social logins to your next web app without much hassle, using this authentication middleware for connect.
Pro Has detailed information
Very simple and fast.
Pro Lightweight
Pro Massive ecosystem of middleware
If you have not already checked out the Express.js ecosystem of middleware, you should.
Pro Performance
There are two aspects of performance: how quick a developer can deliver a feature and how fast the app is running on the product server. Act is designed to deliver excellent results in both aspects. With unbeatable developing experience, Act makes it very easy to release a feature; on the other side Act is very fast in runtime. Check out this 3rd party benchmark result.
Pro Hot reload
You never restart while you're working on your Act application. Act's hot reload feature is fast and stable, it makes you feel like dealing with scripting language frameworks like Django or NodeJs. Watch this video and feel it.
Pro Scalability
Act is built as a stateless framework. It supports horizontal scale.
Pro Secure
Act is built as a secure product. It provides built-in CSRF/XSS prevention mechanism. And act-aaa makes it very easy to implement Authentication/Authorization/Auditing in your app.
Pro Superb RESTful support
Act makes creating RESTful service a kids game. It features AdaptiveRecord (allows front end to drive the data structure), JSON response control (just declare the fields you want to present or hide) and RESTful URL routing with path variables.
Pro Easy to deploy
ActFramework is not a servlet framework and there are no requirements on containers/app servers. It has a small package size (a helloworld distribution package size is less than 20 MB), a small memory feet print (a helloworld app heap usage is less than 20MB) and a fast boot up speed (a helloworld app starts in less than 3s).
Pro Templating
Act's view architecture is very flexible and support using multiple view engines in your app. The default template engine is Rythm, a very developer friendly and powerful template engine. Act also support other templating solutions including freemarker, velocity, thymeleaf, and mustache via plugins.
Pro Configuration for multiple environments
Act supports load configuration from a common dir and then overwriting it from a profile dir. Makes it very easy to manage configurations in different environments (e.g., dev, uat, sit, prod) Watch this video to see the innovative way Act delivers its configuration support.
Pro Concise and expressive
Act does not require you to put Annotation when it is able to infer the intention from other parts of the code, i.e., you don't use @PathVariable
or @RequestParam
to tell Act the binding parameter name. And you don't need a ModelMap
to bind variables to render argument names. Act has sophisticated byte class scanner to detect the variable names to do bindings automatically.
Pro Comply to standards
Act's IoC is built on top of Genie, a fast dependency injection library that fully supports JSR330, and Act's validation solution is built on top of JSR303. Act is NOT an odd framework to most Java developers. Unlike Play1.x, ACT applications follow the standard maven project structure and it is very easy to integrate other Java libraries.
Pro Database access
Act's DB layer is extremely easy to use. It supports SQL databases (through ebean orm) and MongoDB (through morphia). Using multiple datasource can never be that easy with Act's DB layer. Go here for more information on this.
Pro Fast and flexible routing
You can configure your routing in either Spring MVC/Jersey style with annotation or Play style with route table or a combination of both. Act's routing supports RESTful URL path variables, optionally validated with regular expressions.
Cons
Con No single recommended way of doing something
Express considers itself to be a "minimalistic unopinionated framework", it basically lets the developer determine how their project will be organized. On one hand, this gives anyone terrific power and flexibility to use any library they want for a certain task and to organize their project structure however they want. But on the other hand, there's no single recommended way of organizing things, which can be a trap for beginners and experienced developers alike and result in unmaintainable projects.
Con Incomplete microservice support
Although Act is built to be a great framework that supports microservice development, it lacks some of the key features at the moment, like sending requests to other microservices from within the app, service governance, and messaging handling.
Con Very small community
As of February 2017, Act is a brand new framework (even though the project started at the end of 2014). Community is still forming.
Con Functional testing support still under development
Developers are still working on innovative functional testing support for Act.
Con Documentation is still being written
Act's documentation is still under development.
