Sails.js

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

22804 stars · 1915 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Sails.js is a realtime MVC web framework for Node.js, built on Express and Socket.io, designed to resemble Ruby on Rails. It bundles the Waterline ORM with adapters for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and more, and auto-generates REST APIs via blueprints.

Use cases

• build a realtime chat app with websockets in node.js
• generate a REST API backend without writing boilerplate
• build an MVC web application in javascript like rails
• use one ORM across mysql, postgres, and mongodb
• build a data-driven API for react or mobile frontends
• add websocket support to an express-style node app

When to choose

• you want a batteries-included, convention-over-configuration Node.js backend
• your app needs realtime WebSocket features alongside HTTP APIs
• you want database-agnostic ORM with cross-database associations
• you're migrating from Rails-style MVC patterns to JavaScript

When to avoid

• you prefer a minimal, unopinionated framework like Express or Fastify
• you need a large ecosystem of modern middleware and tooling
• your team prefers TypeScript-first frameworks like NestJS
• you only need a lightweight microservice with a few endpoints

Facets

framework · maturity stable

web-framework orm websocket routing api-framework middleware cli web-development backend apis databases cross-platform mvc rails-like waterline blueprints socket-io express-based convention-over-configuration real-time nodejs web-server

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="balderdashy/sails")