Recently I have been learning about Feather JS. However I am pretty much confused by the difference between Express and Feather. One of the most important reason people use Feather is because of its capability to provide real time API. Can't Express use real time as well? What are the other differences that set Feather apart from Express?
Express has not been updated for years, and its next version has been in alpha for 6 years. People may think it is not updated because the API is stable and does not need change. The reality is: Express does not know how to handle async/await .
"Simple" is the primary reason why developers consider ExpressJS over the competitors, whereas "Automatic server rendering and code splitting" was stated as the key factor in picking Next. js. ExpressJS and Next. js are both open source tools.
Feathers is a lightweight web framework built over Express for creating applications. Feathers can be used with JavaScript or TypeScript. Users say prototype applications can be built in a matter of minutes with FeathersJS, and production ready applications in a matter of days.
From the docs
Feathers is a tiny, fully compatible wrapper over Express and Socket.io
So it still uses express
underneath.
Here am assuming, real time
means being able to get data as soon as it's available (this could still be ambigous on how one defines, but yeah rough definition)
So, here real time
could just mean pages getting loaded with data in real time (approx) using the underlying socket.io
functionality.
So comming back to your question:
Can't Express use real time as well?
You can very well integrate socket.io
on your own. Or really any other duplex
socket technologies like websocket
, or others like long polling
, server-sent events
etc.
What are the other differences that set Feather apart from Express?
This part is out of scope for SO question. But in simple terms Feather
adds more functionality using express
underneath.
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