Lift compared with Grails

Question

Lift/Scala is getting a lot of attention lately. Having worked with Grails in the past (and finding it quite handy BTW), I'd like to know if there's anyone who has tried both and what's his/her opinion about them. Is one of them better suited for one kind of scenarios whereas the other is better for other kind, or they compete shoulder to shoulder to solve the same problem ?

Bangalore

They are both web frameworks, just as Groovy and Scala are both programming languages -- but I'm not sure it's really feasible to compare them without a more refined scope (including 'needs' and 'personal preferences') – Dkl

Answer 1

If you're building a CRUD app and you're comfortable with Grails, then stick with it.

If any of the following things are priorities for you, then Lift is going to be better:

• Security -- Lift is more secure than Grails
• Performance -- Lift is faster than Grails because Scala is faster than Groovy
• Ajax -- Lift's Ajax support is simpler and easier than Grails
• Comet -- If you want to build server-push apps, there's nothing better than Lift
• Choice of ORMs -- Lift is not tied to a single ORM, so use anything you want

Net-net, Lift is not another me-too MVC framework. It's something different and something better.

Cohlette

Thanks for your reply, David. Regarding ORMs, what is the closest approach that can be implemented in Lift that resembles GORM ? – Bangalore

Lift's Mapper is an ActiveRecord style ORM. – Cohlette

Answer 2

While this compares a different basket of fruit, I think you may enjoy David Pollak's ("Lift creator") response: Why would I use Scala/Lift over Java/Spring?

One thing to remember about Lift is that it is a continuation-based framework.

Dkl

Answer 3

Take as a fact that Lift is hard to start with (Docs could be better, not enough paradigms) and Scala too. Anyways it's not rails-easy but IMO it pays off long-term. I agree with dpp's answer, just wanted to add seven things

Bolanger

Answer 4

Grails is a very powerful framework with much more uptake than Lift.

I also feel that Groovy is much easier to learn than Scala.

Lift is not more secure than Grails

Lift may be faster than Grails (maybe, I haven't tested this)

You are not precluded from using Ajax, Comet or ORMs other than Hibernate with Grails

Check out the plugins available for the Grails framework for more info:

http://grails.org/plugins/

Ruebenrueda