Aura Components vs Lightning Web Components

Aura Components vs. Lightning Web Components

July 4, 2023 eye-glyph 78

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Salesforce, the leading customer relationship management software, always focuses on delivering a fantastic customer experience. As part of Salesforce’s dedication to continuous advancement, the platform has endured significant advances in UI development frameworks. This blog compares two powerful UI frameworks: Aura Components vs Lightning Web Components.

In the ever-evolving landscape of UI development, Salesforce recognized the need for frameworks that offer enhanced flexibility, performance, and developer productivity. To meet these demands, Salesforce introduced Aura Components and later introduced Lightning Web Components, representing a shift towards modern UI development paradigms.

Are you ready to explore Aura Components and Lightning Web Components in detail? Let’s get started.

What is the Aura Component in Salesforce?

Aura Components is a framework introduced by Salesforce in 2014 for building dynamic web applications on the Salesforce platform.

They offer a structured approach to UI development, allowing developers to create reusable and modular components. Aura Components consist of a markup file defining the UI and a controller file handling the component’s logic. They follow the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern and support event-driven programming, enabling flexible and interactive applications.

Aura Components are compatible with multiple platforms, making them versatile for development. They empower Salesforce developers to create engaging and customizable user interfaces in Salesforce applications.

Key Features of Salesforce Aura Components

Here we have outlined the different features of Aura Components:

1. Code Reusability

Aura Components inspire code reusability by enabling developers to create self-contained, modular components. These components can be easily reused across multiple parts of the application reducing the developer’s time and effort.

2. Model-View-Controller (MVC) Architecture

Aura Components Salesforce is based on Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. It enables the developers to separate the data retrieval and manipulation (Model), the UI rendering (View), and the component’s logic and behavior (Controller). These separations make it easy for developers to organize codes, and maintain and test applications.

3. Event-Driven Programming

Aura Components follows event-driven programming enabling the communication and interaction between the components. Events can be created to trigger specific actions to enhance the user experience. For example, let’s say you have a button component that, when clicked, needs to trigger an action in another component. By firing a custom event from the button component and handling it in the other component, you can establish communication and trigger the desired action.

4. Cross-Platform Compatibility

Aura Components are designed to be compatible with various platforms, including mobile phones and desktops. This flexibility enables the developers to create UIs that seamlessly adapt to different screen sizes and device types. For example, a component displaying the list of records can easily adjust itself according to the device’s layout and appearance, creating a seamless experience.

5. Lightning Design System Integration

Another great feature of Aura Components Salesforce is the ability to easily integrate with the Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS), a collection of CSS frameworks and design guidelines. These integrations ensure the user experience is consistent and visually appealing UI that aligns with Salesforce and its design standards.

6. Server-Side and Client-Side Processing

Aura Components provide a rational approach to processing data and logic.  These components are capable of managing both server-side and client-side operations.

For example, with Aura Components, you can execute server-side operations like getting data from Salesforce. At the same time, you can handle client-side interactions like validating the user input or dynamically updating the UI without making server requests, resulting in faster response times.

What are Lightning Web Components in Salesforce?

Lightning Web Components (LWC) is a modern framework introduced by Salesforce for building user interfaces in their platform. LWS follows the standards-based approach for creating UI for Salesforce native applications by web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Salesforce lightning web components were presented as a modernized version of Aura Components, offering a more lightweight, efficient, and developer-friendly solution. It leverages the latest web standards and browser capabilities to deliver efficient and responsive user experiences.

With Lightning Web Components, developers can create reusable and modular components that encapsulate functionality and can be easily integrated into various parts of a Salesforce application. This promotes code reusability, maintainability, and scalability.

Key Features of Lightning Web Components

Here we have outlined the features of lightning web components:

1. Lightweight and Fast

As the name suggests lightning web components are designed to be lightweight and performance-centric. The optimized code of these components ensures faster loading time and improved performance. For example, you can create a lightning web component to display a list of accounts, and the component’s optimized rendering engine ensures smooth scrolling and fast data loading.

2. Standards-Based Development

Lightening Web Components adhere to standard web development standards like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This approach promotes code reusability and compatibility with other web technologies. For instance, you can utilize standard HTML tags and CSS styling to create a lightning web component that renders a customizable form input field.

3. Enhanced Developer Productivity

Lightening Web Components come with a robust set of tools and resources to enhance developer productivity. Salesforce provides a user-friendly development environment, code completion, and integrated debugging capabilities. As an example, you can utilize the Salesforce CLI (Command-Line Interface) to quickly scaffold a lightning web component and start developing with ease.

4. Component-Based Architecture

Driven by component-based architecture, LWC enables developers to create standalone and reusable components. Another benefit of component-based architecture is that multiple simple components can be blended to create complex user interfaces.

5. Reactive Data Binding

Lightning Web Components follow the reactive data binding where changes in the data automatically update the component’s UI. This eliminates the need for manual DOM manipulation and ensures consistent data synchronization. For example, let’s consider a Lightning Web Component that displays real-time data updates such as a live sales dashboard that updates dynamically as new data is received.

6. Event-Driven Programming

Lightning Web Components support event-driven programming, enabling communication and interaction between components. You can define custom events and handle them in other components to trigger actions or update UI elements. For example, you can create a lightning web component for a shopping cart that triggers an event when an item is added, allowing other components to respond accordingly.

You can also read here how Salesforce Lightning is a Revolution Over Classic.

Aura Components vs Lightning Web Components

Here we have created a detailed comparison between Aura Components vs Lightning Web Components. Let’s learn in detail how they stand against each other.

1. Syntax and Structure

Aura Component syntax follows a markup-based approach using a combination of HTML-like tags, attributes, and expressions enclosed within double curly braces (`{{…}}`). The component’s markup is defined in a (`.cmp`) file, which contains the component’s structure and user interface elements. Additionally, Aura Components have a separate controller file (`.js`) that handles the component’s logic and event handling. The files are organized within a dedicated Aura folder structure.

In this example:



{!v.message}

  • tag specifies the Aura Component.
  • tag defines an attribute called “message” of type String with a default value.
  • tag displays the value of the “message” attribute using the expression {!v.message}.

  • tag sets up an event handler for the “init” event, specifying the controller action to execute when the event is triggered.

Lightning Web Components, on the other hand, use a modern JavaScript-based syntax using ES6+ standards. The component’s markup is defined in a (`.html`) file, where you write HTML and JavaScript using decorators, such as (`@api`) and (`@wire`), to define component attributes and wire data from Salesforce. The component’s logic is contained within a JavaScript file (`.js`) and is typically written using ES6 modules. The files are organized within a module-based structure.

Let’s take a look at the following example to gain a better understanding of Salesforce Lightning Web Components:

HTML File:

Javascript (.js) file:

import { LightningElement, track } from 'lwc';

export default class MyComponent extends LightningElement {
@track greeting = 'Hello, LWC!';

handleClick() {
this.greeting = 'Button Clicked!';
}
}

In this example: