req.md

Request (req)

Sails is built on Express, and uses Node's HTTP server conventions. Because of this, you can access all of the Node and Express methods and properties on the req object whereever it is accessible (i.e. in your controllers, policies, and custom responses.)

A nice side effect of this compatibility is that, in many cases, you can paste existing Node.js code into a Sails app and it will work. And since Sails implements a transport-agnostic request interpreter, the code in your Sails app is WebSocket-compatible as well.

Sails adds a few methods and properties of its own to the req object, like req.wantsJSON and req.params.all(). These features are syntactic sugar on top of the underlying implementation, and also support both HTTP and WebSockets.

Protocol Support

The chart below describes support for the methods and properties on the Sails Request object (req) across multiple transports:

	HTTP	WebSockets
req.file()	✅	⬜
req.param()	✅	✅
req.route	✅	✅
req.cookies	✅	⬜
req.signedCookies	✅	⬜
req.get()	✅	⬜
req.accepts()	✅	⬜
req.accepted	✅	⬜
req.is()	✅	⬜
req.ip	✅	✅
req.ips	✅	⬜
req.path	✅	⬜
req.host	✅	⬜
req.fresh	✅	⬜
req.stale	✅	⬜
req.xhr	✅	⬜
req.protocol	✅	✅
req.secure	✅	⬜
req.session	✅	✅
req.subdomains	✅	⬜
req.method	✅	✅
req.originalUrl	✅	⬜
req.acceptedLanguages	✅	⬜
req.acceptedCharsets	✅	⬜
req.acceptsCharset()	✅	⬜
req.acceptsLanguage()	✅	⬜
req.isSocket	✅	✅
req.params.all()	✅	✅
req.socket.id	✖️	✅
req.socket.join	✖️	✅
req.socket.leave	✖️	✅
req.socket.broadcast	✖️	✅
req.transport	⬜	✅
req.url	✅	✅
req.wantsJSON	✅	✅

Legend

• ✅ - fully supported
• ⬜ - feature not yet implemented
• ✖️ - unsupported due to protocol restrictions