What features does Pedestal have compared to other Clojure web frameworks?

Question

Recently Relevance announced Pedestal, a new web framework for Clojure.

How does this framework compare to other Clojure web frameworks such as Compojure, Webjure, Conjure, Moustache and so on, in terms of features, ease of application development, developer tools, etc.

See Comparison of Clojure web frameworks

Answer 1

Pedestal is, as far as I know, the only framework that facilitates the use of Clojure on both the server- and client-side, the latter being possible thanks to Clojurescript.

Answer 2

My take on it is Pedestal is more about separation of concerns from an architectural perspective than it is a feature set:

• Clojure on the server and client side (via ClojureScript) allows you to put code (and thus logic) where it makes the most sense
• http requests are decoupled from a specific thread in the server with the interceptor abstraction
• separates application logic from rendering concerns
• rendering control for state changes in the app via data flow

Those things are big advantages over the life cycle of an app. Having said that, it is alpha level and subject to change and the control by data flow is a bit different, so like anything new there is a learning curve.

If you check out the documentation and listen to the podcast here it will clear up a lot. Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Another thing is, Pedestal, in contrast to Ring, allows processing of one requests in more than one thread. Its Ring compatible Interceptor model allows this: http://pedestal.io/documentation/service-interceptors/

Answer 4

As the author of Clojure on Coils I would actually say Pedestal is a safer bet right now, as Clojure on Coils main feature which is Backtracking code is not ready yet. Backtracking code means that you can click on an element on the web page and it can show you the whole call stack and code tree that built that element (right now it only shows you the code that generated the HTML and does not go deeper).

Update

The backtracking code is now implemented