Just like human beings need a skeletal structure known as a "skeleton" to give rigidity, and shape and to also protect vital organs in the body such as the kidney, liver, the heart, etc, so are Website Development Frameworks. They are otherwise known as software frameworks that are designed to support the development of a website (either static or dynamic) and web applications such as web resources, web services, web APIs, etc.
The Web development frameworks are the components that, when put together, are used to create website applications.
HISTORY OF WEB DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS: THE WHO, WHEN, AND HOW.
Tim Bernice-Lee, who was a British computer scientist, conceived the idea of the World Wide Web for data and information to be communicated among researchers in 1980. And then in 1990, the first web browser and server software was created by him after he proposed the idea of the web. As web browsers such as JavaScript began to gain capability and popularity, web development frameworks came to the limelight. As far back as 2004, a technique was used to create dynamic experiences to utilize standardized technologies such as Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML), and this technique is known as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX). This AJAX enabled dynamic web applications. And then when the iPhone was introduced around 2007, mobile devices became challenging for web development. The solution to that problem was web development. But as web development integrated and became more complex, web development frameworks and libraries such as jQuery, Angular, and React gained significance. They became popular because of their ability to simplify complex web development. The emergence of these frameworks and libraries helped to facilitate the creation of interactive web frameworks. And then, in 2010, the concept of full stack development came into emergence where developers are skilled in both the frontend (client side) and backend (server side) technology.
COMPONENTS OF WEB DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS: HOW TO RECOGNIZE WEB DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS
What, then are the components which make up a web development framework?
- Security Components: They are made available to protect a website against vulnerabilities of all kinds.
- Error handling: They can handle and report errors.
- Command-Line Interface: It helps to streamline development processes, manage project scaffolding, and also to ensure the execution of tasks automatically.
- The caching mechanism helps to improve the performance of the website by keeping some frequently used data in the memory or other storage mechanisms.
- Router: For incoming requests to be appropriately managed to the right controller/handler based on a defined URL pattern, routers are used.
FEATURES OF WEB DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS
- Template Engine: It is responsible for the generation of content by the combination of data with templates.
- Object-Relational Mapping (ORM): It maps database objects to code objects to simplify database interaction.
- Front-end Integration: Web Development Frameworks support the integration of front-end Integration such as JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc.
- RESTful API Support: It also supports the creation and consumption of RESTful APIs.
- Cross-platform support: It permits and enhances development across various platforms and environments.
ADVANTAGES OF WEB DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS: WHY SHOULD YOU USE WEB DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS?
Now that you have some background knowledge about web development frameworks, what are the merits of web development frameworks?
- The code structure and patterns are standardized, which makes it easier for developers to collaborate on projects. This is made possible because of the convention the framework follows.
- It also possesses consistent coding standards that make it easier for developers to collaborate.
- Several frameworks possess a rich ecosystem of plugins, extensions, and libraries, to proffer solutions to common problems and to expand the functionality of the website.
- A large number of tutorials, educational materials, and guides are readily available for popular frameworks, which makes it easier for developers to learn them.
- For developers to quickly understand the framework's features and best practices, the framework often comes with comprehensible documentation.
- Frameworks also ensure that code components can be reused to promote efficiency and reduce redundancy in the development of the website.
- Another benefit of using a website framework is that it comes with testing tools that are inbuilt and support writing unit tests, to ensure the reliability of code components and for easy maintenance.
DISADVANTAGES OF WEB DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS
The major disadvantage/challenge with using web development frameworks is that, just like it is complicated for you to change the shape of your skeletal system in your body, so is the limitation in making changes to frameworks. The paradigm used for the coding and the design is restrictive, too. Another disadvantage of using frameworks is that the programming language used to code the framework may be unknown to the developer, and this becomes challenging for the developer. These challenges, at times, put developers off and discourage them from using frameworks.
However, when comparing the merits of using web development frameworks to their demerits, it shall be discovered that it is more efficient and faster to use them than to build from scratch (although individual preference is considerable).
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