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jQuery UI VS API Platform

Compare jQuery UI VS API Platform and see what are their differences

jQuery UI logo jQuery UI

Curated set of user interface interactions, effects, widgets, and themes built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library

API Platform logo API Platform

REST and GraphQL framework to build modern API-driven projects
  • jQuery UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-17
  • API Platform Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-15

jQuery UI features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    jQuery UI simplifies creating and managing complex UI components with straightforward syntax and comprehensive documentation.
  • Compatibility
    jQuery UI is highly compatible with older browsers, offering a broader range of support compared to more modern frameworks.
  • Extensibility
    jQuery UI is designed to be modular and extendable, allowing developers to use only the components they need and easily extend or theming them.
  • Rich Set of Widgets
    It comes with a variety of pre-built widgets such as datepickers, accordions, and sliders, which can save development time.
  • Animated Effects
    jQuery UI includes many built-in animation effects that can enhance the user experience without requiring additional libraries.
  • Theming
    The library provides Themeroller, a tool that allows developers to create custom themes easily, ensuring UI consistency and branding.

Possible disadvantages of jQuery UI

  • Performance
    Due to its extensive feature set, jQuery UI can be relatively heavy, which may affect performance, particularly in resource-constrained environments.
  • Not Mobile-First
    jQuery UI is not designed with mobile-first principles in mind, making it less optimal for modern responsive web applications.
  • Learning Curve
    While easy to use for simple tasks, mastering jQuery UI for more complex applications may require a significant learning curve.
  • Dependency on jQuery
    Since jQuery UI relies on the jQuery library, it adds an additional dependency which can be limiting if you prefer or are required to use vanilla JS or another library.
  • Declining Popularity
    With the rise of modern frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, jQuery UI has seen a decline in popularity and community support.
  • Limited Modern Features
    Compared to contemporary UI libraries, jQuery UI lacks some of the modern features and performance optimizations found in newer libraries.

API Platform features and specs

  • Rich Feature Set
    API Platform offers a comprehensive set of tools and features for building APIs, including schema generation, documentation, testing, and more, which can accelerate the development process.
  • GraphQL Support
    It provides built-in support for GraphQL, allowing developers to create flexible and efficient queries, which can improve client performance and reduce over-fetching of data.
  • Automatic CRUD Operations
    API Platform simplifies backend development by automatically generating CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations from the model schema, reducing boilerplate code.
  • Integration with Symfony
    Built on top of Symfony, API Platform leverages Symfony's robustness, community support, and vast amount of plugins and bundles, which can enhance the APIโ€™s flexibility and extensibility.
  • API-First Design
    It supports designing APIs first with a specification-based approach, encouraging developers to define data models and interfaces before implementation, leading to clearer and more maintainable code.

Possible disadvantages of API Platform

  • Complexity for Simple APIs
    For simple or small-scale APIs, API Platform's extensive features can introduce unnecessary complexity, making it less suitable for straightforward projects where a simpler solution would suffice.
  • Learning Curve
    The comprehensive feature set can lead to a steeper learning curve for newcomers, especially those unfamiliar with Symfony or the API Platformโ€™s methodologies.
  • Symfony Dependency
    Since API Platform is deeply integrated with Symfony, it might not be the ideal choice for projects using different frameworks, as it would require adopting Symfonyโ€™s ecosystem.
  • Limited Community Compared to Larger Frameworks
    While it has a supportive community, API Platform is more niche compared to larger frameworks like Express or Django, which might result in fewer community resources or third-party tutorials.
  • Overhead on Performance
    The abstraction and features provided by API Platform may introduce some overhead, potentially impacting performance compared to more lightweight solutions optimized for specific use cases.

Analysis of jQuery UI

Overall verdict

  • jQuery UI is a solid choice for projects that already use jQuery or for developers who need to implement standard UI components quickly and easily. However, for projects starting from scratch, considering more modern alternatives that align with the current state of JavaScript development, such as React, Vue, or Angular, might be beneficial due to their extensive ecosystems and support for modern development patterns.

Why this product is good

  • jQuery UI is a popular library that extends the capabilities of jQuery with a robust set of user interface interactions, effects, widgets, and themes. It is particularly well-suited for developers who are already familiar with jQuery and need to implement features quickly without starting from scratch. Its components are widely used because they are both customizable and reliable, and it is backed by a large community that offers support and contributions. Furthermore, jQuery UI simplifies complex interactions and effects that would otherwise require significant effort to code manually, especially for those who seek cross-browser compatibility.

Recommended for

    jQuery UI is recommended for developers working on legacy projects that heavily rely on jQuery, or for quick, short-to-medium-term projects where ease of use and speed of implementation are paramount. It is also suitable for educational purposes, helping beginners understand DOM manipulation and UI interaction concepts. However, for new projects aimed at creating highly interactive and scalable applications, a framework or library that supports modern front-end technologies may be more appropriate.

jQuery UI videos

jQuery UI tutorial: Adding a user interface with jQuery UI | lynda.com

More videos:

  • Review - jQuery UI Ultimate:Design Amazing Interfaces Using jQuery UI : Understanding the curriculum.

API Platform videos

No API Platform videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to jQuery UI and API Platform)
Javascript UI Libraries
100 100%
0% 0
Web Frameworks
0 0%
100% 100
Development Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
65 65%
35% 35

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, API Platform should be more popular than jQuery UI. It has been mentiond 39 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.

jQuery UI mentions (15)

  • Let Me Talk About Component-based Front-end Development
    The once popular jQuery, with its strengths fully utilized in jQuery UI and Bootstrap, provides many UI components and is also friendly to backend developers, seemingly meeting the requirements. However, looking at their component implementation and resource loading formsโ€”. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    jQuery UI: An open-source library for building user interfaces based on jQuery. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • What is a component library and should you build your own?
    Fortunately, when I started web development in earnest, many of these issues were ironed out. By this point, there were still a handful of libraries that made writing complex interfaces with cross-browser support a little easier. Jquery UI, the first component library I used, supported accordions and other widgets. But the browser is constantly evolving, and we now have a native way of implementing this accordion... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Best ReactJS library for Drag-n-Drop Table for plugin Admin view?
    Because WordPress is already have these jQuery & jQuery UI libraries (https://jqueryui.com/). Source: about 3 years ago
  • jQuery 3.6.2 Released
    We still use jQuery + jQuery UI on our website because it is basically battle tested through 15+ years. https://jqueryui.com/ It is easy as hell. What's there to not like? I don't care to be called names or being old fashioned. I also don't care about "right" tooling for frontend. As far it works and it is robust and it is going to be around for many years, I am fine with it. - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
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API Platform mentions (39)

  • Symfony 7 vs. .NET Core 8 - Controllers
    Another difference is that in .NET Core, we can integrate with OpenAPI out of the box (it is part of the framework), while in Symfony, an API-based application with OpenAPI features is only available using a third-party toolโ€”the API Platform. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Consistent validation with API Platform 3
    API Platform is a great tool for rapid API development, but it has a lot of not-so-well-documented features which can sometimes lead to confusion. Playing around with a new project of mine I've stumbled into one: tests were failing for my validation assertions of endpoints' responses! - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Lucky like a 7 โ€” Seven SymfonyCasts Courses to Master Symfony 7
    Technically API Platform is not part of Symfony. Although, they are both French. ๐Ÿ˜‰. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Shot in the dark
    Probably API-platform. The website is down at the moment, but: https://github.com/api-platform/api-platform It's Symfony based (and plays nice in that ecosystem), also allows you to describe entities via Schema org vocab, has a client generator, and comes with docker-compose and helm charts. I've used it extensively to build various headless services. It's really easy to expose annotated Doctrine entities. Source: about 3 years ago
  • API Platform up and running in 5 minutes ๐Ÿš€
    API Platform is a framework for API-first projects, built on top of Symfony components. Let's see how to create a minimal and lightweight starter project in just 5 minutes! - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing jQuery UI and API Platform, you can also consider the following products

jQuery - The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.

Play Framework - An open source web framework which follows the model-view-controller architecture. It is light-weight, web-friendly, and stateless. It provides minimal overhead for highly-scalable applications.

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React

Adonis JS - AdonisJs is a Node.js web framework with breath of fresh air and drizzle of elegant syntax on top of it

Babel - Babel is a compiler for writing next generation JavaScript.

ExpressJS - Sinatra inspired web development framework for node.js -- insanely fast, flexible, and simple