NodeJS is a really popular Chrome V8 based runtime engine. The increasing popularity of NodeJS is pushing many new frameworks every year. ExpressJS is one of the most popular NodeJS frameworks out there. It's a microframework that makes it really quick to build an application with Node. AdonisJS on the other hand is a full-featured framework. In this article, we will discuss the 7 most important differences between AdonisJS vs ExpressJS.
AdonisJS vs ExpressJS
AdonisJS is developed by Harminder Virk. It’s inspired by frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Laravel.
ExpressJS is developed by TJ Holowaychuk in 2010. It was later acquired by StrongLoop.
ExpressJS vs AdonisJS – Architechture
ExpressJS is a minimalist web framework. It gives you the freedom and flexibility to work with any database, ORM or folder structure.
AdonisJS on the other hand is an MVC framework. MVC stands for Model, Views, and Controllers.
Every AdonisJS project ships with a set of folders and files. We need to understand the folder structure first in order to work with it.
However, for a scalable web application, a good project structure matters. So AdonisJS makes sure you get it right.
ExpressJS vs AdonisJS – Routing
A robust routing system helps us to develop an application quickly. Both of the frameworks have a decent routing system.
That can work with static and dynamic, both types of routes.
Express router is pretty basic but it does the job.
Adonis gives us the option to bind routes to controllers, group routes, create REST resources with them.
ExpressJS vs AdonisJS – ORM
ORM stands for Object Relational Mapping. Evry modern full-featured framework ships with its own ORM.
ORM is very helpful while working with database queries, tables, table relationships.
AdonisJS has its own ORM called Lucid. It’s a very powerful tool that can quickly build queries, create and handle migrations, can run seeds and factories, and also provides data modeling.
Express does not ship with an ORM. However, there are multiple 3rd party ORM available for NodeJS which can be used with Express.
Sequelize is a really good ORM for NodeJS and can work with Express.
ExpressJS vs AdonisJS – Authentication
Adonis 5 ships with its own authentication system that can save your time in production.
It supports 3 different types of authentication – Web sessions, API tokens, and basic HTTP authentication as well.
Express JS does not have an inbuilt authentication system. There are tools like Okta which can be integrated with ExpressJS to handle authentication.
AdonisJS vs ExpressJS – Templating
AdonisJS ships with its own templating engine called Edge. You can use loops, add conditions, create layouts, create components, and a few more.
Edge also provides a tool to inspect and debug templates with it.
Express does not have any templating engine out of the box. However, you can create your own templating engine with the app.engine(ext, callback)method.
Creating your own templating engine may sound interesting but it’s a time-consuming process.
Express has supports for many external templating engines. Here you can find the full list.
AdonisJS vs ExpressJS – Sending mails
You can use the official adonisjs/mail package to send emails from your application. It uses NodeMailer internally to send emails.
Also, it has inbuilt support for SMTP, AWS SES, Mailgun, and Sparkpost.
We can also use Nodemailer with Express. However, with Express we need the set the drivers manually.
AdonisJS vs ExpressJS – Performance
Finally the most crucial question – is Express JS faster than Adonis JS?
In short, the answer is no. AdonisJS 5 has added a lot of amazing features and improvements.
The HTTP server is one of those. It’s almost as fast as Fastify.
You can find more details regarding the benchmark here.
Finally, I have shared 7 major differences between AdonisJS and ExpressJS. Both are amazing frameworks but make sure to choose the one according to your needs.