Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Draft.js VS CodeMirror

Compare Draft.js VS CodeMirror and see what are their differences

Draft.js logo Draft.js

Rich Text Editor Framework for React

CodeMirror logo CodeMirror

CodeMirror is a versatile text editor implemented in JavaScript for the browser.
  • Draft.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-03-29
  • CodeMirror Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-19

Draft.js features and specs

  • Rich Text Editing
    Draft.js provides a powerful framework for building rich text editors with a high level of customization, allowing developers to implement various formatting and styling options with ease.
  • Immutable.js Integration
    Draft.js uses Immutable.js to manage editor state, which can lead to improved performance and easier state management, as it helps avoid unnecessary re-renders and mutations.
  • Extensibility
    The library offers the ability to create custom blocks, decorations, and plugins, enabling developers to extend and tailor the editor's behavior to their specific needs.
  • Facebook Support
    Draft.js is developed and maintained by Facebook, which suggests a certain level of reliability and indicates a strong backing in terms of updates and community support.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    The library is well-documented, with comprehensive guides and examples that help developers get started quickly and understand the full potential of the framework.

Possible disadvantages of Draft.js

  • Complexity
    Draft.js has a steep learning curve, especially for developers who are not familiar with React or Immutable.js, as it requires understanding its unique architecture and concepts.
  • Bundle Size
    The inclusion of Immutable.js can lead to a larger bundle size for web applications, which might be a concern for developers aiming for minimalistic and fast-loading applications.
  • Limited Built-in Features
    Draft.js provides a basic editor out of the box, which means developers often need to implement or find third-party plugins for advanced features like tables, embedded media, or collaborative editing.
  • Customizability Overhead
    While high customizability is a strength, it also means that basic implementations may involve more boilerplate code and setup compared to other, more out-of-the-box solutions.
  • Sparse Updates
    Draft.js does not receive updates as frequently as some other open-source projects, which can lead to uncertainty around the timeline for bug fixes or new feature implementations.

CodeMirror features and specs

  • Extensible
    CodeMirror is highly customizable with a rich API that allows developers to extend its functionality to meet specific needs. It supports a wide variety of languages and can be adapted to different editing scenarios.
  • Lightweight
    CodeMirror is designed to be efficient and lightweight, suitable for integration into web applications without significantly impacting performance.
  • Wide Language Support
    It offers support for many programming languages out of the box, which makes it versatile for different programming tasks.
  • Active Community
    There is an active community of developers contributing to CodeMirror, which ensures regular updates, improvements, and bug fixes.
  • Embeddable
    CodeMirror can be easily embedded into existing web pages or web applications, enabling developers to provide a rich text editor experience.

Possible disadvantages of CodeMirror

  • Complex Configuration
    While CodeMirror is highly customizable, setting it up and configuring it to fit specific requirements can be complex and sometimes overwhelming for new users.
  • Minimal Default Features
    Out of the box, CodeMirror provides a basic editor without many advanced features, requiring extra configuration and plugins to add functionality like autocompletion or linting.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers new to CodeMirror, there may be a learning curve involved in understanding its structure and API, especially when creating custom plugins or features.
  • Performance on Large Files
    CodeMirror can experience performance issues when dealing with very large files or extremely complex documents, which may affect its suitability for all projects.
  • Limited Built-in Mobile Support
    CodeMirror’s default interface is not inherently optimized for touch interactions, making it less ideal for mobile or tablet editing without additional customization.

Draft.js videos

Live coding – Draft.js copy-paste fix

CodeMirror videos

How to get value of CodeMirror text editor - step by step guide | CodeMirror #02

More videos:

  • Review - HTMLHint Linter Codemirror Integration

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Draft.js and CodeMirror)
Text Editors
53 53%
47% 47
Rich Text Editor
47 47%
53% 53
Developer Tools
69 69%
31% 31
IDEs And Text Editors
50 50%
50% 50

User comments

Share your experience with using Draft.js and CodeMirror. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CodeMirror should be more popular than Draft.js. It has been mentiond 45 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Draft.js mentions (26)

  • Lexical 0.24 with Vanilla JS: Getting started
    Lexical is an open source project and considered the successor of Draft.js. It is primarily developed by Meta, licensed under MIT. It is not restricted to React, but supports Vanilla JS, too. The flexibility enables us to integrate it with other JS libraries such as Svelte and Vue. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Ask HN: Is there a licensable/free version of the "Substack" email editor?
    - https://draftjs.org/ If you're talking about liking the full experience with settings and previews, that I'm afraid is all custom built. I can't imagine an open source reusable one being out there, but I could be wrong! - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Which Rich Text Editor to use ?
    I've always used Quill and always satisfied with it. It can be adapted to React Native as well. Despite the most popular RTE is Draft js it has some limitations on mobile. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Inline styles in draft-js
    To be able to create an editor, the only requirement is to know how to set up a ReactJS (or NextJs) project. We're going to use draft-js and contenido packages in this tutorial. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • A brief introduction to draft-js
    Briefly and as the draft-js official site says, its a. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
View more

CodeMirror mentions (45)

  • 25 Project Ideas from Beginner to Advanced with Open Source Contributions
    NOTE: CodeMirror 6 exists, and is more mobile-friendly, more accessible, better designed, and much more actively maintained. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Integrating the ruff language server
    This post covers some background on the Language Server Protocol and then goes into a demonstration of how to integrate the ruff language server into a simple code editor built using CodeMirror. The code for the demonstration is availiable on github. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Adding a Code Editor to your React App
    From the official CodeMirror documentation:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)
    For those that don't know the author, Marijn Haverbeke, is the creator of CodeMirror (code editor) and later ProseMirror (text editor). https://codemirror.net/ https://prosemirror.net/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Show HN: Heynote – A Dedicated Scratchpad for Developers
    Performance is mostly handled by CodeMirror (https://codemirror.net/), the underlying editor that Heynote is built upon. It seems to handle quite large buffers well. Where I have seen some minor performance issues is when working with very large blocks in certain language modes. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Draft.js and CodeMirror, you can also consider the following products

Quill - Powerful, API-driven rich text editor

ACE (Ajax Code Editor) - Focused and built towards coders, web designers, and web builders, ACE (Ajax Code Editor) can help...

Editor.js - A block-styled editor with clean JSON output

ProseMirror - A toolkit for building rich-text editors on the web

Trix - A rich text editor for everyday writing.

Monaco Editor - A browser based code editor