Learn VAPOR with Real Code Examples

Vapor provides an MVC architecture and modular components for web development in Swift.

Written entirely in Swift, offering high performance and type safety.

Includes built-in ORM (Fluent), routing, templating (Leaf), authentication, and middleware support.

Highly modular and extensible, ideal for modern cloud and microservice architectures.

Supports both synchronous and asynchronous programming with Swift NIO for concurrency.

Routing system with typed parameters

Fluent ORM and database migrations

Leaf templating for HTML rendering

Authentication and sessions

Event-driven concurrency with Swift NIO

Controller - handles HTTP requests and responses

Model - represents database entities using Fluent ORM

View - server-side rendering with Leaf templates

Routes - map URLs to controller actions

Middleware - intercepts requests/responses for additional processing

Sources/App/ - main application code (controllers, models, routes, config)

Public/ - static assets

Resources/ - Leaf templates, localization files

Tests/ - unit and integration tests

Package.swift - dependency management and project definition

Define routes in `routes.swift`

Create controllers with actions

Create models using Fluent ORM

Apply middleware for authentication, logging, or validation

Render views using Leaf templates or JSON responses

Beginner: simple REST API returning JSON

Intermediate: multi-model app with Fluent and Leaf templates

Advanced: real-time WebSocket application

Expert: cloud-native scalable microservices

Enterprise: backend for multi-platform Swift apps

Vapor vs Node.js/Express: Vapor type-safe, compiled; Node.js dynamic, large ecosystem

Vapor vs Django: Vapor uses Swift, async-first; Django Python, mature ecosystem

Vapor vs Laravel: Vapor is Swift-based; Laravel PHP-based with bigger ecosystem

Vapor vs Kitura: Both Swift frameworks, Vapor more actively maintained

Vapor vs Flask: Vapor type-safe and structured; Flask microframework in Python

2016 - Initial release by Tanner Nelson

2017 - Vapor 2 introduces Swift 3 support

2018 - Vapor 3 rewrites core with Swift NIO

2020 - Vapor 4 released with async/await support

2025 - Vapor 5.x modernized for Swift concurrency and cloud-native development

Controller - handles HTTP requests and responses

Model - ORM representation using Fluent

View - Leaf template for server-side rendering

Middleware - pre/post-processing for requests

Route - maps URL to controller action