Today, the user experience offered by an application determines its popularity and long-term profitability. Therefore, it is essential that developers focus on both the front-end and the back-end of the application. Typically, users can see, touch and experience the front-end or user interface of the application directly.
But an application’s front-end experience is driven by several aspects of its back-end: database interactions, business logic, user request processing, and performance. Therefore, developers frequently explore ways to improve the performance and quality of the backend code. Most developers take advantage of robust back-end frameworks to make applications provide an optional user experience without spending extra time and effort.
Brief overview of 12 widely used back-end web frameworks
1) ASP.NET Core
Microsoft recently released ASP.NET Core 1.0 with several innovative features to simplify the development, testing, and deployment of web and cloud applications. In addition to being an open source web application framework, ASP.NET Core supports three different platforms: Windows, OS X, and Linux. In addition, it allows developers to implement their applications in various ways. Developers have the option of integrating ASP.NET Core with various open source web development tools, while taking advantage of a robust integrated development environment (IDE) such as Visual Studio.
2) Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails (RoR) is a widely used web application framework for Ruby programming languages. It supports several widely used software development paradigms, including MVC, with an emphasis on software testing. The plug-and-play functionality provided by RoR allows developers to customize the web application according to different business requirements. Programmers can further take advantage of the code library and scaffolding options provided by RoR to perform common web development tasks without writing additional code. In addition, they can use RoR to prototype the application and move quickly from the planning phase to the development phase of the project.
3) Django
Django is a very popular Python web application framework. Python enables developers to create web applications with concise, readable, and reusable code. Also, Django supports the MVC design pattern. Therefore, developers can keep business logic, user interface, and application data separate. At the same time, they can take advantage of the built-in tools provided by Django to perform common web development tasks such as sitemaps, user authentication, content management, and memcaching. Additionally, Django allows developers to customize individual parts of the web application according to specific business requirements. In addition, it provides various packages, along with a robust ORM system and a dynamic management interface.
4) Node.js
The JavaScript library allows web developers to write server-side code in JavaScript. Many developers use Node.js to write both client-side and server-side code in JavaScript. Node.js is also widely used by developers as part of the MEAN Stack alongside MangoDb, Elegant.js, and AngularJS. However, Node.js is designed as a cross-platform runtime and executes code through Google’s JavaScript V8 engine. It further improves the execution speed of JavaScript code by executing commands in parallel through non-blocking functions and allowing programmers to execute operations asynchronously. At the same time, Node.js includes functions to simplify common web development tasks such as file system I / O, data transmission, binary data, and networking.
5) Game frame
The open source web application framework is written in Scala. It enables developers to create feature-rich web applications by combining the Java and Scala programming languages. Because Play supports the MVC design pattern, it is easier for developers to simplify web application development by keeping business logic and UI layers separate. In addition, the stateless and non-blocking architecture of the Play Framework enables developers to scale web applications without investing additional time and effort. Developers can further assess code quality on an ongoing basis by making use of the built-in testing support and simply hitting the Scala web framework upgrade workflow.
6) Catalyst
Catalyst is a widely used Perl web framework. Because it supports the MVC principle, it is easier for developers to create and maintain large web applications by keeping the user interface and business logic layers separate. Additionally, developers can take advantage of the out-of-the-box plugins that Catalyst provides to perform a variety of web development tasks, such as user authentication, caching, and session management. Additionally, Catalyst comes with a lightweight test server and robust database ORM, while also supporting multiple template languages. The Perl web framework is also designed with features to keep common development tasks simple and clean.
7) Laravel
The PHP framework enables developers to perform common tasks such as authentication, session management, routing, and caching by writing expressive code. In addition, it provides a variety of tools to accelerate the development of large and complex web applications. In addition, it makes it easy for programmers to perform unit tests to assess the impact of changes made to the code at various stages of development. Laravel also comes with a template engine called Blade that allows programmers to reduce performance overhead by writing simple PHP code in templates. Laravel version 5.3 also comes with a number of new features such as simplified API authentication and the option to add WebSockets to the application.
8) Phalcon
Phalcon is a modern PHP framework that is designed with a focus on speed. Unlike other frameworks, Phalcon is a PHP extension written in the C programming language. Therefore, it consumes less resources while offering optimized performance. Since Phalcon is loosely coupled, programmers have the option of using the entire frame or its specific parts as glue components. Also, they can download and install the framework as a PHP module. In addition, Phalcon provides functions to perform common tasks such as database access, authentication, transactions, messaging, caching, queuing, template engine, form builder, and routing.
9) Symfony
Symfony comes with a variety of features that help programmers create and maintain PHP web applications without investing extra time and effort. It allows developers to add functionality to the website by adding a variety of pre-made components. At the same time, it also allows them to use third-party software components. Therefore, it is easier for programmers to improve the functionality and performance of the website by adding a variety of software components. Users also have the option of unit testing by using popular frameworks like PHPUnit. They also have the option of speeding up complex application development by using the full stack version of the framework.
10) Yii frame
Yii is one of the high-performance PHP frameworks available on the market. Because the MVC pattern supports, it is easier for programmers to reduce development time by keeping the business logic and user interface separate. At the same time, they can easily improve application performance by taking advantage of the powerful caching support provided by Yii. Yii also helps developers work with AJAX more efficiently. Additionally, it makes collecting user input through forms more secure by providing validators, widgets, and helper methods. In addition, it includes features to protect the application from SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. Developers can use Yii for unit testing and functionality testing without spending additional time and effort.
eleven) CakePHP
The PHP framework comes with features to help programmers quickly prototype and develop applications. Developers can take advantage of CakePHP’s code generation feature to easily prototype their application. At the same time, they can avoid writing longer lines of code by taking advantage of built-in functions for database access, authentication, validation, translation, and caching. Users can start using CakePHP simply after setting up the database. CakePHP further guides programmers to handle all aspects of the application efficiently, while also supporting the MVC design pattern.
12) Zend Framework 2
Besides being a mature PHP framework, Zend is also being used by several large websites. The open source framework enables programmers to create websites using object-oriented code. Zend’s modular structure also makes it easy for users to combine its basic components with other frameworks and libraries. Since Zend is designed as a collection of classes, programmers can load the necessary components as individual libraries. Additionally, they can use ZendService to access popular web services by implementing client-side libraries. However, many programmers feel that Zend has a more difficult learning curve. Zend still comes with features to speed up large-scale web application development.
In general, web application developers have the option to choose from a wide range of back-end web frameworks. But smart developers always go for a back-end framework that complements the preferred programming language and meets all project needs. Developers should evaluate the pros and cons of each framework according to their skills and needs.