Overview

Sails.js

Stacks337

Followers511

Votes296

GitHub Stars22.9K

Forks1.9K

Rails API

Stacks95

Followers142

Votes16

GitHub Stars5.1K

Forks275

Rails API vs Sails.js: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Rails API and Sails.js

Introduction

Rails API and Sails.js are both popular web application frameworks that streamline the development process. However, there are key differences between them that developers need to understand in order to choose the right framework for their needs.

Modularity: Rails API follows a modular approach, allowing developers to pick and choose only the required components for their application. In contrast, Sails.js provides a full-stack framework with a pre-defined set of modules, making it easier to get started but potentially adding unnecessary complexity.
Language: Rails API is written in Ruby, while Sails.js is written in JavaScript, specifically Node.js. Developers comfortable with Ruby might find Rails API more intuitive, while those with expertise in JavaScript might prefer working with Sails.js.
Community Support: Rails API has a larger and more mature community, which means there are more resources, documentation, and plugins available. Sails.js, on the other hand, is growing rapidly but still has a relatively smaller community, which can limit the availability of support and resources.
Database Support: Rails API has built-in support for multiple databases, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite. Sails.js, on the other hand, primarily focuses on MongoDB as its default database, although it does support other databases as well.
Convention over Configuration: Rails API follows the principle of convention over configuration, meaning that it provides a set of default conventions that developers can follow to minimize the need for configuration. Sails.js, on the other hand, allows more flexibility and customization, allowing developers to configure almost every aspect of their application.
Scalability: Rails API is known for its scalability and has been used to build large-scale applications like Twitter and Shopify. Sails.js, on the other hand, is still relatively new and might not have the same level of performance and scalability as Rails API.

In Summary, Rails API and Sails.js differ in their modularity, language, community support, database support, configuration approach, and scalability.

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Detailed Comparison

Sails.js	Rails API
Sails is designed to mimic the MVC pattern of frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the requirements of modern apps: data-driven APIs with scalable, service-oriented architecture.	Rails::API is a subset of a normal Rails application, created for applications that don't require all functionality that a complete Rails application provides. It is a bit more lightweight, and consequently a bit faster than a normal Rails application. The main example for its usage is in API applications only, where you usually don't need the entire Rails middleware stack nor template generation.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 22.9K	GitHub Stars 5.1K
GitHub Forks 1.9K	GitHub Forks 275
Stacks 337	Stacks 95
Followers 511	Followers 142
Votes 296	Votes 16
Pros & Cons
Pros 49 Data-driven apis 47 Waterline ORM 37 Mvc 32 Easy rest 25 Real-time Cons 5 Waterline ORM 4 Defaults to VueJS 0 Standard MVC	Pros 5 Lightweight 5 Great for quick decoupled apps 3 Simply the best 2 Soon to be merged into core Rails 5 1 Logging by default
Integrations
Grunt Node.js MySQL PostgreSQL MongoDB Socket.IO ExpressJS	Ruby

What are some alternatives to Sails.js, Rails API?

ExpressJS

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.

Django REST framework

It is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.

Sinatra

Sinatra is a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort.

Lumen

Laravel Lumen is a stunningly fast PHP micro-framework for building web applications with expressive, elegant syntax. We believe development must be an enjoyable, creative experience to be truly fulfilling. Lumen attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as routing, database abstraction, queueing, and caching.

Slim

Slim is easy to use for both beginners and professionals. Slim favors cleanliness over terseness and common cases over edge cases. Its interface is simple, intuitive, and extensively documented — both online and in the code itself.

Fastify

Fastify is a web framework highly focused on speed and low overhead. It is inspired from Hapi and Express and as far as we know, it is one of the fastest web frameworks in town. Use Fastify can increase your throughput up to 100%.

Falcon

Falcon is a minimalist WSGI library for building speedy web APIs and app backends. We like to think of Falcon as the Dieter Rams of web frameworks.

hapi

hapi is a simple to use configuration-centric framework with built-in support for input validation, caching, authentication, and other essential facilities for building web applications and services.

TypeORM

It supports both Active Record and Data Mapper patterns, unlike all other JavaScript ORMs currently in existence, which means you can write high quality, loosely coupled, scalable, maintainable applications the most productive way.

FeathersJS

Feathers is a real-time, micro-service web framework for NodeJS that gives you control over your data via RESTful resources, sockets and flexible plug-ins.