A debate has been going around for a while between reactjs vs angularjs about which of them is better for front end development.

According to a recent comparison statistics, React is used by 65% of developers while 19% plan to learn it. On the other hand, 24% developers use Angular and 34% are planning to learn it.

Let us talk about what went behind the making of Reactjs and Angularjs before getting down to point by point reactjs vs angularjs comparison!

AngularJs

AngularJs is a JavaScript framework for web app development originally created by Google and is still supported by Google and an active community of developers.

The idea behind the framework was to combine well known components, patterns, designs and development practices in a single framework to take care of the challenges faced in the development of single page applications. AngularJs support team standardized components like models, views, controllers and services to achieve that.

All of this lead to Angular making use of two important software design patterns called MVC framework and dependency injection.

The ultimate outcome was that the developers could create web applications faster using AngularJs.

Apart from this, Angular also makes use of many abstractions for paying attention to balancing complexity and modularity.

ReactJs

ReactJs is one of the most popular javascript frameworks to develop web applications, which has attracted a large community of developers.

The creation of react js resulted in a huge number of reusable components that will save your time while coding. This javascript library itself promotes writing loosely coupled code which is modular and composable.

Facebook created React and chose an architecture different from AngularJs but similar to MVC frameworks.

Honestly, there is no particular structure for applications built with react. It is a large JavaScript library that will help you update the view for the user but won’t let you create applications on its own.

It lacks the model and controller layer that is useful to fill in the gap. Facebook introduced flux, which currently has multiple versions to control the application workflow.

You are probably clear with the basics of both now. So, let’s move forward the analysis by discussing the similarities and differences between AngularJs and ReactJs!

Angular and React are similar in a way that the final outcome is a web application. But the functionalities and methods of creation are different, so there are certain dissimilarities too. We will compare them on the following parameters:

Data Binding

It is an important tool used by the developers to populate user interface with model data. There are many ways to bind data, each with their own pros and cons.

AngularJs - Angular makes use of two way data binding that connects document object model values to model data. If the user interacts with an "input" field and gives a new value to the app then both, view and model are updated.

Two way data binding is beneficial for AngularJs as it will help you to write less boilerplate code for creating interactions between the components in your app.

You don’t need to create a new method to track changes in the app and change your JavaScript code every time.

The drawback here is that Angular by default creates a watcher for each binding and during development you may come to a point when an app is packed with too many watchers for bound elements.

ReactJs - Developers are of the opinion that React has an advantage over Angular in the data binding method.

Since it uses only one way data binding, you can direct the data flow in one direction. It becomes easier to find out where the data was changed, which is not possible in AngularJs.

In order to implement this, Facebook created its own application architecture known as Flux. It is great when you are working with dynamically updated data. One way data flow keeps the complexity under control and it becomes much easier to debug self contained components of large React applications.

Implementation

AngularJs - It is a framework which provides a large number of native options and features. Moreover, Angular enables you to benefit from a number of options, which makes it possible to start a project more quickly without going through the process of making tough decisions at the very beginning of the project.

ReactJs - If we compare them, it is essential to know that ReactJs is an open source JavaScript library. Therefore, you need to add external component libraries to get the same amount of features. You will have to add elements for “routing” to ensure unidirectional flows, to call APIs, manage dependencies, set up tests and much more.

Architecture

AngularJs - It is based on the Model View View Model (MVVM). The framework comes with an all inclusive list of tools as well as features like data link, forms, routing, change detection, navigation, HTTP implementation and many more.

ReactJs - It covers only the Model View Control (MVC) model, so you have to make use of other libraries like Redux and Flux as a controller or react router for navigation.

Performance

AngularJs - Its MVVM gives you an advantage to reduce the loading speed of web pages to a great extent. Furthermore, the communication is in the asynchronous mode. Not only does it reduce the number of entrances to the server, but also as the visual interface is on client side, part of the back end queries are removed. Overall, AngularJs improves the speed of designing the web applications.

ReactJs - ReactJs creates its own virtual DOM where the components are attached. It makes navigation easy in a website as all the data gets displayed without refreshing the page.

Resolving Dependencies

AngularJs - AngularJs uses the basic OOP pattern called dependency injections. It means that you can write dependencies in a separate file.

Actually, it's a pain to create dependency directly in an object. But in Angular dependency injection is inherent to any standard functions. Dependencies are only passed as parameters in any order in functionalities.

ReactJs - The major difference between Angular development and React is that React doesn’t offer any built-in containers for dependency injection.

But it doesn’t mean that you have to think of ways to insert dependencies in your React project. Instead you can use instruments to inject dependencies automatically in a react application.

Conclusion

To sum it up, we can rightly say that both AngularJs and ReactJs have a strong community support and documentation although they differ in their approach on application development.

It is difficult to declare a clear winner, therefore we have listed down a few cases where you should choose between the two.

Choose ReactJs if:

You may expand the functionality of your application in future.

You have dynamic content which needs an app that will update the look constantly.

You are fine with a slower initial phase of development

Choose AngularJs if:

You are in the inception phase of development or require a holistic framework that will get you started with the project quickly.

You are looking for a strong and well maintained framework for projects of any size.