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Sails makes it easy to build custom, enterprise-grade Node.js apps. It is designed to resemble the MVC architecture from frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the more modern, data-oriented style of web app development. You can do all the things you're used to with MVC frameworks like CakePHP, Grails, Symfony, etc., but Sails is especially good for building APIs, single page apps/sites, and realtime features like chat.
Sails is a Model, View, Controller (MVC) architecture for Node.js. You can learn more about MVC here, here, and here, but the tl;dr is that it's the really awesome, industry-standard way of doing things for modern web apps. If you're wondering if Sails is a "proper MVC", you're probably right! It wasn’t made to mimic Django, Zend, or Rails; it was made to resemble the MVC architecture we’re used to while still unlocking the features necessary to easily leverage WebSockets, streams, and data-driven APIs.
Sails does a few things other MVC frameworks can't do:
Sails supports transport agnostic routing, which allows your controllers/policies to automatically handle Socket.io / WebSocket messages. In the past, you'd have to maintain a separate code base to make that happen. This makes it much easier to add pubsub features, in particular the server-originated or 'comet' notifications you need for realtime apps, realtime analytics dashboards, and multiplayer games.
Node has fantastic performance. Specifically, we've had some great results using 4 EC2 small servers to scale Sails to 10,000 concurrent connections.
- Built-in support for Redis session store, and Redis MQ for reverse pubsub routing
Node.js is the fastest-growing, all-javascript solution to server-side development. Writing your code in one language on the front-end and back-end means less context-shifting, faster development, and better apps.
Sails's controllers and policies are really just Express middleware. This means your Sails app logic is interoperable with existing Express apps, and vice versa
- Supports the existing ecosystem of Express middleware
- Automatically generated JSON API for manipulating models (You don't have to write any backend code to build simple CRUD apps)
- Automatic route bindings for your controller actions
- Authentication logic
- Role-based access control
- Custom policies (e.g. file storage quotas)
If you are developing an HTML/CSS front-end powered by Sails, there are some other convenience features we've included that might help you out.
As of Sails v0.9, all new projects come with a Gruntfile. Grunt is to Node.js as mvn/ant is to Java, or as rake is to Ruby. It has a strong, supportive community, and a wide array of plugins and build tools. Adding support for your favorite template engine or css/js preprocessor is as easy as modifying your project's Gruntfile
Sails bundles support for LESS and JST templates
- If you use the
--linkeroption when creating your new project, your assets will be automatically bundled up and included in your layout HTML - Front-end support for SASS, Handlebars, CoffeeScript, Stylus, TypeScript, etc. is as easy as modifying your app's Gruntfile
- In production mode, Sails will also minify and concatenate your assets
- If you need to take web performance even further (this comes up for mobile web apps in particular), you can run
sails buildto output a CDN-ready snapshot of your apps assets
sails buildspits out a ready-to-deploywwwdirectory for use in all of the sorts of places where you need indepenedent, API-driven front-end code- Sails has easy-to-use CORS integration
- Built-in support for cross-site request forgery (CSRF) protection, with a handy token-based option for single-page apps
####From one geek to another:
I work on a lot of web and mobile apps with our team at Balderdash. More than ever before, it's important that your applications not only work, but look and feel awesome. I originally built Sails to tackle these sorts of API-driven, front-end heavy projects for our startup and enterprise clients. Since then, top-notch experiences have become industry standard (typically using Backbone, Angular, Ember, Knockout, etc.) Reducing the amount of time and energy you spend on your app's server code allows you to spend more time focusing on cool features. The easier your backend code is to write and maintain, the more nimble you can be. The more nimble you are, the more adaptable your project can be to your users' needs, and the faster you respond to bug fixes. The more adaptable you are... you get the idea!