What is the difference between a framework and a library?

Question

What is the difference between a framework and a library?

I always thought of a library as a set of objects and

Answer 1

A framework can be made out of different libraries. Let's take an example.

Let's say you want to cook a fish curry. Then you need ingredients like oil, spices and other utilities. You also need fish which is your base to prepare your dish on (This is data of your application). all ingredients together called a framework. Now you gonna use them one by one or in combination to make your fish curry which is your final product. Compare that with a web framework which is made out of underscore.js, bootstrap.css, bootstrap.js, fontawesome, AngularJS etc. For an example, Twitter Bootstrap v.35.

Now, if you consider only one ingredient, like say oil. You can't use any oil you want because then it will ruin your fish (data). You can only use Olive Oil. Compare that with underscore.js. Now what brand of oil you want to use is up to you. Some dish was made with American Olive Oil (underscore.js) or Indian Olive Oil (lodash.js). This will only change taste of your application. Since they serve almost same purpose, their use depends on the developer's preference and they are easily replaceable.

---

Framework : A collection of libraries which provide unique properties and behavior to your application. (All ingredients)

Library : A well defined set of instructions which provide unique properties and behavior to your data. (Oil on Fish)

Plugin : A utility build for a library (ui-router -> AngularJS) or many libraries in combination (date-picker -> bootstrap.css + jQuery) without which your plugin might now work as expected.

---

P.S. AngularJS is a MVC framework but a JavaScript library. Because I believe Library extends default behavior of native technology (JavaScript in this case).