When creating a front-end programming, developers will run across Angular and React. Both have great documentations and communities that are using them, and both can be capable to do anything you want. So which one should you use?
There are plenty of differences between the two. But comparing Angular to React is like comparing apples to apples. Comparing Angular’s syntax and component model and React’s, is like comparing an off-the-shelf computer's CPU to a raw CPU.
But nevertheless, they both can accomplish the same thing, using their own way.
First of all, Angular is HTML-centric framework that is easier to work with, and puts more things with its wide array of arsenal. On the other hand, React is a JavaScript-centric library with speed in mind, but tends to be difficult for developers.
So with quite a few differences at the start, you need to know each of them first to get a better understanding of what they do best, before knowing what is the best one for you to use.
AngularJS
Angular has been around since 2009. Since then, the Google-backed framework has risen to become the incumbent JavaScript framework of choice for building dynamic single page applications (SPAs) on the web.
Angular is a comprehensive JavaScript framework that contains everything you need to set up the client-side part of a website. Just like any other frameworks, Angular provides a programming pattern or structure (Model View Controller, or MVC) that helps streamline and standardize the web development workflow.
It uses various attributes and custom HTML elements to provide functionality on various Document Object Model (DOM) elements.
AngularJS came to popularity with some of its key advantages that include:
- Angular directives (extension to HTML).
- Dependency injection.
- Two-way data binding.
- A solid templating engine.
- On-board form validation.
Angular is a full-sized framework that is packed with features. It can manipulate DOM using directive to extend HTML. With its two-way data binding, any changes to the view part of MVC can be reflected in the data, and vice versa.
This puts Angular to an advantage since it can reduce much programming overhead that involves syncing the view with the model, speeding up development time.
While Angular's two-way data binding can speed up processes and should work well for many applications, there are times when it can really slow down things. One instance is when it has to manipulate or render large blocks of data-heavy contents. If you use a photo gallery or a list that contains hundreds of items, Angular can be quite slow.
As a workaround, you can use Angular's modularity to switch the view part of MVC to a more capable rendering engine, like React.
One weakness that should be noted is that Angular puts JavaScript into HTML. This is a contrast to React that puts HTML into JavaScript.
In web development, this impacts performance. Angular's HTML-centric approach is its greatest weakness. JavaScript is seen as something more powerful that HTML, so it's more logical to enhance JavaScript to support markup than to enhance HTML to support logic.
On the other hand, React has a JavaScript-centric approach is a more superior approach in binding HTML and JavaScript together, if compared to Angular.
ReactJS
ReactJS, also called React or React.js, is an open-source JavaScript library for rendering views. Developed and released by Facebook in 2013, if compared to Angular, it's relatively new, but it brings some innovations to the the "view" part of MVC architecture.
While full frameworks like AngularJS provide the model, view, and controller, React is a library that caters only to the view. So while it uses one-way data binding, not two like Angular, but with a unique twist it can gain a huge performance advantage over competing technologies.
React is a more performance-minded view renderer than Angular.
MVC frameworks can have a hard time in rendering huge amounts of data, like a list or gallery, for example. But since React works primarily on the view part of MVC, it doesn't have that problem. This is because React only renders what has changed.
So for instance a user is viewing a list of 100 items and changes only 10 items, React will only re-render the 10 items that had been changed but leaving the other 90 items unchanged.
React also uses what Facebook calls a "virtual DOM" to increase performance by writing out a full-render virtually, to then check the differences between the virtual render and what is actually on the DOM, to then create a patch if necessary.
React that is unique in its syntactic and conceptual simplicity, also uses JSX files to optionally write views. What this means, JavaScript and HTML can live in a single file.
Since it's JavaScript-centric, React embraces the power of JavaScript to handle markup, so you are not required to use odd new syntax.
React shines when you have lots of dynamic content changing within the view. Most modern client-side solutions on the web struggle with rendering large lists of items within a single view. This is the reason why websites that have a lot of dynamic and constantly changing contents that are data-extensive, opt to use React.
Conclusion
Angular is a much fuller featured framework than React, which isn’t really a framework at all. While there is indeed some overlap in function, the two technologies are as different as Google and Facebook themselves. AngularJS is a framework, while React is a library.
With React, you typically need to pull a number of other libraries off the shelf to build a real app. This can be great since most modern web applications don't need everything that Angular has to offer. Since many web applications are embracing microservices, microapps, and single-responsibility packages, React gives you the power to have the "right-size" for your application by carefully selecting only what is necessary.
So here you can opt to use React if you don't need most of the features that Angular provides. Using React, you can write less code but do a lot more, And all that with a performance that surpasses Angular due to React’s implementation of a virtual DOM.
However, the number of functionalities that React offer can be overwhelming. With several ways to call a component, React can create confusion for newcomer. This is why React has so many starter kits.
But if you want to create something that can scale large with the help of a more massive community, Angular is your better choice. Since Angular is a framework, it provides significantly more opinions and functionality out of the box. This will help you in getting started quickly without feeling intimidated by decisions. Angular also enforces consistency, and you should feel it to be more practical to work with.
Angular clearly highlights that a full-featured, opinionated nature offers some clear benefits by reducing "JavaScript fatigue".