I'm looking to build a rather robust application with NodeJS, however (being new to Node) I'd like some input from more experienced developers.
I've read some good things about flatiron, express / zappa, and others. Sadly it doesn't seem as though anything like http://ruby-toolbox.com exists for Node at the moment to really get a good slice across the spectrum of options.
Two primary things I need to keep in mind is that I'd like to work with CoffeeScript for development and this app will likely have a lot of interaction with a sister Rails app that also accesses the same database.
It seems that some of the projects I've looked at, such as zappa for example, haven't seen some developmental activity for some months.
What frameworks have the most community behind them and meet my hopes? Do you have any frameworks or combinations of libs that you find most useful together?
If you're coming from Rails, I'd recommend taking a look at http://towerjs.org/:
Tower.js is built on top of Node's Connect and Express, modeled after Ruby on Rails. Built for the client and server from the ground up.
Here's the thing: Node.js is less than three years old. It's attracted enormous attention from many exceptionally smart developers, but you can't expect the level of maturity that the Rails ecosystem has. Not everything in the RoR world has a Node.js analogue, and you're going to have to expect to do more low-level coding to get what you need done.
Yes there are a lot of great sounding but now defunct projects out there.
In terms of finding good active projects, this page is a good place to start: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/modules
Some of the modules I recommend include
Async Forever n moment
Otherwise, express is virtually universal, and I haven't heard of flatiron or zappa before