Every application needs backend development, and choosing a backend framework for a project can be tricky. Let’s discuss the 5 best backend frameworks for web development.
What are Web Development Frameworks?
Web development frameworks are collections of resources and tools that software engineers use to create and maintain websites and web applications. A pre-defined infrastructure, such as the Linux, MySQL, or PHP stacks, makes an excellent foundation for a web development framework. These frameworks provide software developers with the foundation and system-level services they need to create a content management system (CMS) for managing digital content on the web. Frameworks are strong tools that can simplify a web developer’s work. Web caching, authorization and authentication, database mapping, and configuration are a few elements connected to web frameworks. They make it easier to create web applications.
What are Backend Frameworks?
Backend frameworks are libraries of server-side computer languages that aid in creating a website's backend. Backend frameworks that offer ready-made components facilitate the development of dynamic web applications. They simplify dealing with databases. In some ways, backend frameworks simplify a developer's job because they don't have to code every single line in various programming languages; instead, they can use pre-established structures and sets of available resources.
The Benefits of Using Frameworks
Frameworks speed up development, but they also offer many more advantages.
The main advantages of using frameworks for creating web applications are:
You can avoid writing repetitive code for several applications.
Web development frameworks allow you to defend your application against frequent attacks and stop data tampering.
They make software maintenance and debugging simple.
Web frameworks are the quickest and most effective approach to creating self-sustaining web applications because they place a primary emphasis on enhancing code readability and reusability.
Top 5 Backend Web Development Frameworks
Looking for more information on backend frameworks? Let's discuss the top 5.
1) Express.js
Express.js is one of the most well-known Node.js web development frameworks. It’s a free, open-source framework for creating single-page, multi-page, and hybrid web applications. It is a backend web application for developing RESTful APIs. Based on the HTTP method and URL, it defines a routing table that executes various operations. Developers at Netflix, Twitter, Uber, and many more chose Express. Express is asynchronous, quick, and simple to understand.
Top Features
Faster server side development: Express provides many of the frequently used Node.js functionalities throughout the entire app in the form of easily accessible functions. This eliminates hours of coding.
Debugging: Debugging is essential for successful web apps. Express.js helps to debug by offering a debugging technique that precisely identifies buggy areas.
Routing: Express has a very advanced routing mechanism that uses URLs to maintain page state.
Templating: Express offers templating tools that let programmers create HTML templates on the server side and then use those templates to create dynamic content for web pages.
Pros of Express
Supports caching: Express provides a caching function, which spares you from repeatedly running code.
Faster development time: Express enables developers to work on their projects quickly and efficiently.
High scalability: The program provides outstanding modules, packages, and additional resources that allow developers to create dependable and scalable web applications. Developers can easily extend their applications by adding nodes and supplementing with new resources.
Community support: As one of the most widely used Node.js backend web development frameworks, Express has the most community support, tools, and packages available.
Supports Google’s V8 Engine: The framework is particularly powerful for developing and deploying real-time, collaborative, and network-based applications at an enterprise level because it supports a variety of Google V8 Engine packages.
Cons of Express
Lack of organization: Code can become difficult to understand when there is no structural way to organize things.
Lots of manual labor: Endpoints, middleware, and other components all require manual construction and testing.
2) Django
Django is one of the free, open-source, Python-based backend server-side web development frameworks. It’s an advanced Python web framework that promotes quick development and simple design. Python makes the process of creating web pages simpler. Instagram, Pinterest, Quora, DropBox, and YouTube are a few popular websites that use Django.
Top Features
Open Source: It’s a free, open-source framework for online applications. It is available for download from the public repository with the source code.
Scalable: Django has the potential to quickly and flexibly switch from small to large application projects because of its scalability.
Secure: Django is extensively used and well regarded by web developers, as it’s quite secure.
Pros of Django
Community Support: An active community constantly works to make the framework more stable and user-friendly.
Flexibility: The framework can be easily changed to meet certain requirements.
Fast Development: It enables developers to carry out quick development tasks. Django gives programmers internal benchmarks to gauge their overall development speed and enables the simultaneous use of several components.
Cons of Django
Not suitable for small projects: The Django web framework includes more code that uses the server's processing power and time. Because of this, it’s not appropriate for projects with a limited number of features and requirements.
Difficult to learn: It has a lot of features that are difficult for developers coming from other languages to understand.
Lack of conventions: Django lacks conventions, which is one of the main reasons why many programmers dislike it. For programmers accustomed to using frameworks that prioritize convention over configuration, this causes a challenge.
3) Laravel
Laravel is one of the most well-known web development frameworks in the world. It’s free and open source, used to create simple and complex web applications, and cabable of sharing modules between different projects. Laravel follows the Model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern. If you’re familiar with PHP, using Laravel will make your process easier and save you a ton of time if you're building a website from scratch.
Top Features
Modularity: Laravel includes a large number of libraries and modules that aid developers in creating PHP web applications that are responsive and modular.
Authentication: It identifies the users of the system.
Email support: A built-in class in Laravel named mail facilitates email sending.
Blade Template Engine: Laravel's blade template engine is straightforward but incredibly powerful. It has no impact on your web app's performance and doesn't prevent you from utilizing straightforward PHP code in views.
Pros of Laravel
Routing: A unique aspect of Laravel is its hassle-free routing, which enables you to direct your application to the proper controller.
MVC: As an MVC framework, Laravel eliminates the requirement for developers to use the outdated practice of writing full PHP and PHP code in the same files.
Queue management: To reduce the time it takes for users to respond, it removes tasks that are no longer important or necessary and queues them.
Cons of Laravel
Minimized inbuilt support: Users receive limited built-in assistance because Laravel is a lightweight and straightforward framework.
Mixed quality at times: Their web development frameworks are not a viable option for inexperienced developers because some components are poorly designed.
Lack of communication between versions: From Laravel 4 to Laravel 5, there is no smooth transition. The software could become unusable if you attempt to upgrade the code.
4) Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is a framework for server-side web applications. Rails, also known as "Ruby on Rails," is a model-view-controller (MVC) framework. It’s an open-source framework for developing web applications. It aims to simplify development by offering a pre-built structure and everything you need to construct a web application.
Top Features
AJAX Library: A large collection of AJAX functions are available in Rails.
Customized URL: Ruby on Rails can be used to create search engine URLs.
Rake Command: With the rake restart command in Rails 5, you can restart all of your apps.
Rails API: Create APIs and remove all middleware that is not required for an application.
Keyword Argument: It allows keyword arguments, which reduces the amount of memory that a rail application uses.
Debugging: It’s simpler to debug apps with the provided detailed error reports.
Pros of Ruby on Rails
Secure: Issues with cybersecurity pose a severe threat to the foundation of businesses. Ruby on Rails is designed to guard against threats.
Time efficient: When compared to other tools, Ruby on Rails makes building applications much faster.
Cons of Ruby On Rails
Documentation: Finding reliable documentation might be challenging. When written documentation is required, you might only have your test suite to rely on.
Lack of flexibility: It may be challenging to customize Ruby on Rails to meet the requirements of your product because it is an opinionated framework with many hard dependencies and modules.
5) Flask
Python-based Flask is one of the best micro web development frameworks. It does not need special programs or libraries. Flask includes extensions that let you add functionalities to your applications as though they were built right into the framework.
Top Features
Werkzeug: A WSGI toolkit that carries out utility operations like requests and response objects.
WSGI: Python web application development now adheres to the web server gateway interface (WSGI) standard.
Jinja 2: A templating engine for Python.
Unit testing: It provides support for unit testing.
Pros of Flask
Flexible: The main benefit of a Flask is its versatility; not only can it be quickly moved about, but it also ensures that the structure won't collapse if a component is changed.
Scalable: Because Flask is a microframework, you can use it to rapidly expand a project. Because of how easy it is to use and how few dependencies it has, it can scale up without any problems.
Cons of Flask
No login or authentication: Flask does not offer authentication.
Community: Finding a solution to an issue can be challenging because there won't be as many active users to respond to the inquiries in the Flask community as there are in the Django community, for example.
Conclusion
The majority of these web development frameworks are created using well-known programming languages and provide excellent functionality and capabilities for your project. The specific needs of your project will determine the optimal server environment, so it's up to you to decide which server framework to utilize.