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  5. ExpressJS vs Sails.js vs hapi

ExpressJS vs Sails.js vs hapi

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

ExpressJS
ExpressJS
Stacks35.1K
Followers24.0K
Votes1.6K
Sails.js
Sails.js
Stacks337
Followers511
Votes296
GitHub Stars22.9K
Forks1.9K
hapi
hapi
Stacks434
Followers456
Votes87

ExpressJS vs Sails.js vs hapi: What are the differences?

<ExpressJS, Sails.js, and hapi are popular web application frameworks in Node.js. Each framework has its own set of features and benefits. Below are the key differences between ExpressJS, Sails.js, and hapi.>

  1. Architecture: ExpressJS is a minimalist framework that provides a lot of flexibility and control over the application's architecture. Sails.js, on the other hand, is a full-fledged MVC framework with built-in support for features like ORM, WebSockets, and REST API generation. hapi is a configuration-centric framework that emphasizes a plugin-based architecture, allowing developers to easily add and remove functionality as needed.

  2. Ease of Use: ExpressJS is known for its simplicity and ease of use, making it ideal for small to medium-sized applications. Sails.js, with its MVC structure and automatic generation of REST APIs, is better suited for larger and more complex applications that require a lot of built-in features. hapi, with its focus on configuration and plugins, requires more setup but offers a high level of customization and scalability.

  3. Community Support: ExpressJS has a large and active community with a wide range of plugins and middleware available for developers. Sails.js also has a strong community but is more focused on enterprise applications, while hapi has a smaller but dedicated community with a focus on building secure and scalable applications.

  4. Real-time Capabilities: Sails.js is known for its built-in support for WebSockets and real-time communication, making it a popular choice for applications that require real-time features. ExpressJS and hapi can also support real-time capabilities through the use of third-party libraries and plugins, but Sails.js simplifies the process with its integrated functionality.

  5. Performance: ExpressJS is considered to be faster and more lightweight compared to Sails.js and hapi, making it a popular choice for applications that require high performance. Sails.js and hapi, while providing more built-in features and functionality, may have slightly lower performance due to their additional overhead.

  6. Learning Curve: ExpressJS has a shallow learning curve and is easy to get started with for beginners. Sails.js, with its MVC structure and built-in features, may have a steeper learning curve but can be easier to work with once the basics are understood. hapi, with its configuration-centric approach, may require more initial setup and have a steeper learning curve for developers who are not familiar with this style of framework.

In Summary, ExpressJS, Sails.js, and hapi each offer unique advantages and trade-offs in terms of architecture, ease of use, community support, real-time capabilities, performance, and learning curve. Developers should choose a framework based on the specific requirements of their project.

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Advice on ExpressJS, Sails.js, hapi

Tony
Tony

Oct 21, 2020

Review

I personally like using a wholly JS stack, with TypeORM + MySql/Postgres over MongoDb + Mongoose because TypeOrm's Typescript support is much stronger. After developing large projects with Typescript, there is no going back to regular javascript (typings help catch a LOT of errors / maintains data structure !)

Sticking with a javascript stack will allow you to share certain aspects of your application between front and backend. For example: one particularly common feature is to validate API call data and form entry data. Both of these are the same data shape typically (aside from pagination, metadata, etc), and can benefit from a single schema for validation. I use Yup to define this schema, then in the front and back end I can utilize this definition instead of rewriting the same logic in two different languages.

Same goes for certain utility functions such as data structure typings, decryption, encryption, sanitizing inputs, formatting of data, and other utilities. No point of writing these in two languages when both frontend and backend will use them. It will also help reduce developer work load, due to less tests / code to work with.

The only thing you must ensure in your import chain the frontend never imports any secret variables or sensitive logic used by the backend, as that will get bundled into your application. All shared imports should be individual modules

If you want to go one step further, next.js is basically create react app with server side rendering (SSR). This would allow you to skip the annoying step of configuring separate backend and frontend build tools. Might be worth exploring depending on your skill level.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

ExpressJS
ExpressJS
Sails.js
Sails.js
hapi
hapi

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.

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.

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.

Robust routing;HTTP helpers (redirection, caching, etc);View system supporting 14+ template engines;Content negotiation;Focus on high performance;Executable for generating applications quickly;High test coverage
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Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
22.9K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
1.9K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
35.1K
Stacks
337
Stacks
434
Followers
24.0K
Followers
511
Followers
456
Votes
1.6K
Votes
296
Votes
87
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 381
    Simple
  • 336
    Node.js
  • 244
    Javascript
  • 193
    High performance
  • 152
    Robust routing
Cons
  • 27
    Not python
  • 17
    Overrated
  • 14
    No multithreading
  • 9
    Javascript
  • 5
    Not fast
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
  • 27
    Makes me Hapi making REST APIs
  • 14
    Simpler than other REST libraries
  • 14
    Configuration
  • 13
    Quality Driven Ecosystem
  • 13
    Modularization
Integrations
Node.js
Node.js
Grunt
Grunt
Node.js
Node.js
MySQL
MySQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
MongoDB
MongoDB
Socket.IO
Socket.IO
Node.js
Node.js

What are some alternatives to ExpressJS, Sails.js, hapi?

Django REST framework

Django REST framework

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

Sinatra

Sinatra

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

Lumen

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

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

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

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.

TypeORM

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

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.

Flask

Flask

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

Echo

Echo

It is a high performance, extensible, minimalist web framework for Go (Golang).

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