Electron vs Sails.js

Overview

Sails.js

Stacks337

Followers511

Votes296

GitHub Stars22.9K

Forks1.9K

Electron

Stacks11.6K

Followers10.0K

Votes148

Electron vs Sails.js: What are the differences?

## Introduction
In this segment, we will explore the key differences between Electron and Sails.js.

1. **Technology Stack**: Electron is a framework used to build cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, while Sails.js is a web application framework for Node.js optimized for building custom, enterprise-grade Node.js applications.
   
2. **Purpose and Use Case**: Electron is primarily used for developing desktop applications with a focus on providing a native-like experience to users, whereas Sails.js is ideal for building web applications and APIs with a strong emphasis on efficiency and scalability.
   
3. **Deployment Flexibility**: Electron applications are deployed as standalone desktop applications that can run on multiple platforms like Windows, macOS, and Linux, whereas Sails.js applications are deployed as web services typically hosted on servers to serve clients over the internet.
   
4. **User Interface Development**: Electron provides tools and libraries for building rich user interfaces with features like menu bars, system tray icons, and native dialog windows, while Sails.js focuses on server-side logic and API development with limited support for front-end user interface components.
   
5. **Community Support and Ecosystem**: Electron has a large and active community with an extensive ecosystem of plugins and tools to enhance development capabilities, while Sails.js has a smaller but dedicated community that focuses on improving the core framework and providing support to developers.
   
6. **Learning Curve**: Electron can be easier for web developers to pick up due to its similarity to web development technologies, whereas Sails.js may have a steeper learning curve for beginners unfamiliar with server-side development concepts like MVC architecture and routing.

In Summary, the key differences between Electron and Sails.js lie in their technology stack, purpose and use case, deployment flexibility, user interface development, community support and ecosystem, and learning curve for developers.

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Advice on Sails.js, Electron

Semih

Software Engineering Manager

Oct 1, 2020

Needs adviceon

JavaScript

HTML5

.NET

Hi,

We are planning to develop a brand new UX for an already existing desktop software. The previous version is developed on C#.NET with Winforms & WPF. Our plan is to use JavaScript/HTML5 based frontend technologies for the new software. For some components, we are highly dependent on .NET/ .NET Core because the JS-based versions are not mature enough.

What would you choose for a desktop-based Engineering Software that supports multi-OS and has rich UI capabilities considering the .NET dependencies?

Thanks in advance,

Semih

57.9k views57.9k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Sails.js	Electron
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.	With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor.
-	Use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with Chromium and Node.js to build your app.;Electron is open source; maintained by GitHub and an active community.;Electron apps build and run on Mac, Windows, and Linux.;Automatic updates;Crash reporting;Windows installers;Debugging & profiling;Native menus & notifications
Statistics
GitHub Stars 22.9K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 1.9K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 337	Stacks 11.6K
Followers 511	Followers 10.0K
Votes 296	Votes 148
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 69 Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications 53 Open source 14 Great looking apps such as Slack and Visual Studio Code 8 Because it's cross platform 4 Use Node.js in the Main Process Cons 19 Uses a lot of memory 8 User experience never as good as a native app 4 No proper documentation 4 Does not native 1 Each app needs to install a new chromium + nodejs
Integrations
Grunt Node.js MySQL PostgreSQL MongoDB Socket.IO ExpressJS	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Sails.js, Electron?

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.

Related Comparisons

Electron vs Sails.js: What are the differences?

## Introduction
In this segment, we will explore the key differences between Electron and Sails.js.

1. **Technology Stack**: Electron is a framework used to build cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, while Sails.js is a web application framework for Node.js optimized for building custom, enterprise-grade Node.js applications.
   
2. **Purpose and Use Case**: Electron is primarily used for developing desktop applications with a focus on providing a native-like experience to users, whereas Sails.js is ideal for building web applications and APIs with a strong emphasis on efficiency and scalability.
   
3. **Deployment Flexibility**: Electron applications are deployed as standalone desktop applications that can run on multiple platforms like Windows, macOS, and Linux, whereas Sails.js applications are deployed as web services typically hosted on servers to serve clients over the internet.
   
4. **User Interface Development**: Electron provides tools and libraries for building rich user interfaces with features like menu bars, system tray icons, and native dialog windows, while Sails.js focuses on server-side logic and API development with limited support for front-end user interface components.
   
5. **Community Support and Ecosystem**: Electron has a large and active community with an extensive ecosystem of plugins and tools to enhance development capabilities, while Sails.js has a smaller but dedicated community that focuses on improving the core framework and providing support to developers.
   
6. **Learning Curve**: Electron can be easier for web developers to pick up due to its similarity to web development technologies, whereas Sails.js may have a steeper learning curve for beginners unfamiliar with server-side development concepts like MVC architecture and routing.

Electron vs Sails.js

Overview