UI Component or Layout?

Question

I want to create an admin grid.
Taking the reference to https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-module-development/create-admin-grid-magento-2.html, I can see there are following two ways :

1. Using Component
2. Using Layout

My question here is which one is better and why?

Answer 1

Each approach has upsides and downsides.
I suggest using the ui-components one because this is where Magento 2 is going right now.
The layouts and blocks approach is just legacy from the M1 version.

But let's take them separately:

Ui Components

• (+) It's mostly configuration. So you write less code, so less code that can break
• (+) you get a cool grid with show/hide columns, full text search, inline edit, export built in and maybe others.
• (+) It can easily be extended with just another xml file in a different module
• (+) any new feature magento rolls out for the grids you will get it automatically in your grid.
• (-) Difficult to debug
• (-) Difficult to build non standard grids
• (-) Not very much control over what happens

Layout files and blocks:

• (+) You got full control of what happens.
• (+) Relatively easy to build non-standard grids.
• (+) Easy to debug
• (+) You can use your knowledge from M1 to do it.
• (-) Grid is not that flexible or extensible.
• (-) you need to write the same code over and over again.
• (-) More code to test or that can break

That's all I have so far. The lists are far from being complete.

• Yogita: Can we develop specific records export csv functionality via layout grid in M2? Like this: prnt.sc/1xdrekr