Edit Page

Globals

Overview

For convenience, Sails exposes a handful of global variables. By default, your app's models, services, and the global sails object are all available on the global scope, meaning you can refer to them by name anywhere in your backend code (as long as Sails has been loaded).

Nothing in Sails core relies on these global variables—each and every global exposed in Sails may be disabled in sails.config.globals (conventionally configured in config/globals.js.)

The App Object (sails)

In most cases, you will want to keep the sails object globally accessible, as it makes your app code much cleaner. However, if you _do_ need to disable all globals, including sails, you can get access to sails on the request object (req).

Models and Services

Your app's models and services are exposed as global variables using their globalId. For instance, the model defined in the file api/models/Foo.js will be globally accessible as Foo, and the service defined in api/services/Baz.js will be available as Baz.

Async (async) and Lodash (_)

Sails also exposes an instance of lodash as _, and an instance of async as async. These commonly-used utilities are provided by default so that you don't have to npm install them in every new project. Like any of the other globals in sails, they can be disabled.

Is something missing?

If you notice something we've missed or could be improved on, please follow this link and submit a pull request to the sails repo. Once we merge it, the changes will be reflected on the website the next time it is deployed.

Sails logo
  • Home
  • Get started
  • Support
  • Documentation
  • Documentation

For a better experience on sailsjs.com, update your browser.

Check out the full Sailsconf 2022 playlist on Youtube

Tweet Follow @sailsjs

Documentation

Reference Concepts App structure | Upgrading Contribution guide | Tutorials More

Concepts

  • Actions and controllers
    • Generating actions and controllers
    • Routing to actions
  • Assets
    • Default tasks
    • Disabling Grunt
    • Task automation
  • Blueprints
    • Blueprint actions
    • Blueprint routes
  • Configuration
    • The local.js file
    • Using `.sailsrc` files
  • Deployment
    • FAQ
    • Hosting
    • Scaling
  • E-commerce
  • Extending Sails
    • Adapters
      • Available adapters
      • Custom adapters
    • Custom responses
      • Adding a custom response
    • Generators
      • Available generators
      • Custom generators
    • Hooks
      • Available hooks
      • Events
      • Hook specification
        • .configure
        • .defaults
        • .initialize()
        • .registerActions()
        • .routes
      • Installable hooks
      • Project hooks
      • Using hooks
  • File uploads
    • Uploading to GridFS
    • Uploading to S3
  • Globals
    • Disabling globals
  • Helpers
    • Example helper
  • Internationalization
    • Locales
    • Translating dynamic content
  • Logging
    • Custom log messages
  • Middleware
    • Conventional defaults
  • Models and ORM
    • Associations
      • Many-to-many
      • One way association
      • One-to-many
      • One-to-one
      • Reflexive associations
      • Through associations
    • Attributes
    • Errors
    • Lifecycle callbacks
    • Model settings
    • Models
    • Query language
    • Records
    • Standalone Waterline usage
    • Validations
  • Policies
    • Access Control and Permissions
  • Programmatic usage
    • Tips and tricks
  • Realtime
    • Multi-server environments
    • On the client
    • On the server
  • Routes
    • Custom routes
    • URL slugs
  • Security
    • Clickjacking
    • Content security policy
    • CORS
    • CSRF
    • DDOS
    • P3P
    • Socket hijacking
    • Strict Transport Security
    • XSS
  • Services
  • Sessions
  • Shell scripts
  • Testing
  • Views
    • Layouts
    • Locals
    • Partials
    • View engines

Built with Love

The Sails framework is built by a web & mobile shop in Austin, TX, with the help of our contributors. We created Sails in 2012 to assist us on Node.js projects. Naturally we open-sourced it. We hope it makes your life a little bit easier!

Sails:
  • What is Sails?
  • Community
  • News
  • For business
About:
  • Our company
  • Security
  • Legal
  • Logos/artwork
Help:
  • Get started
  • Documentation
  • Docs
  • Contribute
  • Take a class

© 2012-2022 The Sails Company. 
The Sails framework is free and open-source under the MIT License. 
Illustrations by Edamame.