Maintainability Evaluation of Single Page Application Frameworks : Angular2 vs. React

Abstract: Web applications are subject to intense market forces, fast delivery and rapid requirement and code change. These are the factors that make maintainability a significant concern in any and especially web application development. In this report we develop a functional equivalent prototype from an existing Angular app, using ReactJs and afterward compare their maintainability as defined by ISO/IEC 25010. The maintainability comparison is made by calculating maintainability index for each of the applications using Plato analysis tool. The results do not show a significant difference in the calculated value of the final products. Source code analysis shows that changes in data flow need more modification in the Angular app, but with the objective oriented approach provided by Angular, we can have smaller chunks of code and thus higher maintainability per file and respectively a better average value. We conclude that regarding the lack of research and models in this area, MI is a consistent measurement model and Plato is a suitable tool for analysis. Though maintainability is highly bounded to the implementation, functionalities which are provided by the Angular framework as a bundle is more appropriate for large enterprises and complex products where React works better for smaller products.