Adonis: The Ultimate JavaScript Framework for Rails

Adonis is a web framework for Node.js which is focused on productivity and developer happiness. It is often compared to Ruby on Rails, as they both offer a similar philosophy and approach to web development.

In this tutorial, we will explore why Adonis is considered the "Rails for JavaScript" and how to get started with it. We will cover the basics of setting up a new project, routing, controllers, views, and middleware.

Setting Up a New Project
To get started with Adonis, you first need to install it. You can do this by running the following command on your terminal:

npm install -g @adonisjs/cli

Once the installation is complete, you can create a new Adonis project by running:

adonis new myapp

This command will create a new Adonis project in a directory called myapp. You can then navigate into this directory by running:

cd myapp

Routing
Routing in Adonis works similarly to Rails. You can define routes in the start/routes.js file. Here’s an example of a basic route:

Route.get('/', 'HomeController.index')

This route tells Adonis to call the index method on the HomeController whenever a GET request is made to the root URL.

Controllers
Controllers in Adonis are responsible for handling the business logic of your application. You can generate a new controller by running:

adonis make:controller HomeController

This command will create a new controller file in the app/Controllers directory.

Views
Views in Adonis are used to render HTML templates. You can generate a new view by running:

adonis make:view home/index

This command will create a new view file in the resources/views directory.

Middleware
Middleware in Adonis is used to intercept and modify incoming HTTP requests. You can define middleware in the start/kernel.js file. Here’s an example of a basic middleware:

const namedMiddleware = {
  auth: 'App/Middleware/Auth'
}

This middleware will be applied to all routes defined in your application.

Conclusion
Adonis is a powerful web framework for Node.js that offers a similar experience to Ruby on Rails. In this tutorial, we covered the basics of setting up a new project, routing, controllers, views, and middleware. Hopefully, this has given you a good overview of why Adonis is considered the "Rails for JavaScript" and how to get started with it.