Stacks49

Votes16

Jobs47

Sinatra

Stacks368

Votes206

Jobs115

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Rails API vs Sinatra: What are the differences?

What is Rails API? Rails for API only applications. 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.

What is Sinatra? Classy web-development dressed in a DSL. Sinatra is a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort.

Rails API and Sinatra belong to "Microframeworks (Backend)" category of the tech stack.

"Great for quick decoupled apps" is the primary reason why developers consider Rails API over the competitors, whereas "Lightweight" was stated as the key factor in picking Sinatra.

Rails API and Sinatra are both open source tools. It seems that Sinatra with 10.6K GitHub stars and 1.89K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Rails API with 5.27K GitHub stars and 293 GitHub forks.

What is Rails API?

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.

What is Sinatra?

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

Want advice about which of these to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Why do developers choose Rails API?

Why do developers choose Sinatra?

5
Great for quick decoupled apps
5
Lightweight
3
Simply the best
2
Soon to be merged into core Rails 5
1
Logging by default

64
Lightweight
48
Simple
35
Open source
19
Ruby
13
Great ecosystem of tools
9
Ease of use
8
If you know http you know sinatra

What are the cons of using Rails API?

What are the cons of using Sinatra?

Be the first to leave a con

What companies use Rails API?

What companies use Sinatra?

What are some alternatives to Rails API and Sinatra?

Grape

Grape is a REST-like API micro-framework for Ruby. It's designed to run on Rack or complement existing web application frameworks such as Rails and Sinatra by providing a simple DSL to easily develop RESTful APIs. It has built-in support for common conventions, including multiple formats, subdomain/prefix restriction, content negotiation, versioning and much more.

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Flask

Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind.

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

Django REST framework is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.

See all alternatives

What tools integrate with Rails API?

What tools integrate with Sinatra?

Ruby

Decisions about Rails API and Sinatra

No stack decisions found

Related Comparisons

Django REST framework

Rails API

Interest over time

Reviews of Rails API and Sinatra

No reviews found

How developers use Rails API and Sinatra

datapile uses

Sinatra

Scalatra (we had to pick Sinatra on StackShare since Scalatra is has not yet been officially added) is the slickest (not to be confused with Slick for Scala) web/applet server framework we've had the pleasure of playing with in Scala.

For all intensive purposes, Scalatra is the Scala version of Sinatra (which for anyone who doesn't know is a Ruby web server DSL).