Sails.js | Realtime MVC Framework for Node.js

sailsjs.org

4 pointsjuristr3 comments

This looks pretty awesome. I have experience with Python/Django. I have been wanting to give Node.js a spin and have been looking around for a good MVC framework with similar functionality of Django, Rails, etc. I am looking forward to giving it a try! I noticed during the demo it said it uses Express.js and refers to it as a good library. I haven't used Express, but it was my understanding that it is a web app framework itself. However, Sails isn't the first framework I've seen that says they use Express. For anyone with experience, what are the limitations, advantages, and disadvantages of using Express directly as opposed to something built on top of it like Sails? Also for anyone experienced with Meteor, how does Sails compare?

Using express directly is very common. Express is basically the Sinatra of Node.js. Because it's somewhat lower-level, it doesn't have a lot of limitations, as the module is really small. It only gives you a routing system, view system, and the connect middleware.

I haven't used Sails, but I've used Meteor. It's pretty cool, not very useful atm because of some limitations. You're stuck with MongoDB (and meteor's ORM-like tool), single instance application, etc... I find it going out on a path than the rest of Node. It's unstandard. It doesn't use NPM for it's packages, so you have to install it differently than every other module.

Yep, I played around a couple of hours yesterday and it is amazing how quickly you get up to speed (some basic NodeJS knowledge is obviously required). I'm trying to build some single-page app prototype, so I'll see how it performs once things get a little more complex.

But I generally like how it approaches policies, data store abstraction and seemless REST http and real-time socket routing. Awesome stuff.

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