Sails is, of course, a web framework. But take a step back. What does that mean? Sometimes, when we refer to the "web", we mean the "front-end web." We think of concepts like web standards, or HTML 5, or CSS 3; and frameworks like Backbone, or Angular, or jQuery. Sails is not "that kind" of a web framework. Sails works great with Angular and Backbone, but you would never use Sails instead of those libraries.
On the other hand, sometimes when we talk about "web frameworks", we mean the "back-end web." This evokes concepts like REST, or HTTP, or WebSockets; and technologies like Java, or Ruby, or Node.js. A "back-end web" framework helps you do things like build APIs, serve HTML files, and handle hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users. Sails is "that kind" of web framework.
Loose coupling with Sails
Sails allow us to pick and choose the components that fit our requirements. In fact, it’s just plain lazy to create things any other way. Sails’s approach is to loosely couple components so that they can be added or subtracted from your app at will. Node at its core has created a “can do” culture eager to experiment and make things work.
Sails accomplishes this loose coupling using plain-old require. No magic, other than the time to craft components that can be part of the whole but don’t need to be present in order for the whole to work. For example, controllers, models, and configuration files are just Node modules. Sails uses some convention to help.
Sails picks up on the name UserController.js in the Controllers folder to deduce that this is indeed a user controller. Another example involves policies. So policies allow you to have a bit of code that executes on controller or specific controller action. The cool part is that the configuration file that connects the policy with the controller/action are separate. That means you can write a bunch of different policies and they are completely portable between Sails apps.
Almost every component of Sails can either be omitted, overwritten, or extended. For example, Sails has a group of tools called blueprints. These blueprints make it really easy to get a project up and running with regard to routes and CRUD operations. But suppose you want to use the read, update, and delete operations but the create action needs some tender loving care. No problem, just build a create action and the other CRUD operations keep working. Your custom action subs in for the blueprint action. It’s just that simple.
That Simple? I would need to try this!
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