[HN Gopher] Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool, Internal...
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Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool, Internal.io, etc.
Author : navaneethpk
Score : 372 points
Date : 2021-06-07 11:44 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| replwoacause wrote:
| Good job navaneethpk, this looks really nice!
| hliyan wrote:
| "Setup" goes to 404:
| https://docs.tooljet.io/docs/setup/architecture
| navaneethpk wrote:
| Aplogies, please use this link:
| https://docs.tooljet.io/docs/deployment/architecture I recently
| changed the structure of documentation, probably forgot to
| change the url somewhere. Will fix it in a while.
| debarshri wrote:
| This goes in an infinite loop now.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| maxdo wrote:
| Is there anything similar with nodejs backend ? Having ruby is a
| big downside since you need extra engineer with ruby knowledge in
| the team.
| krishvs wrote:
| Looks great!
|
| How do you sandbox custom js code. Can we choose if it runs on
| the front-end or server-side?
|
| Most of the low-code opensource builders seems to run it on a
| sandbox in the frontend using realms..but this is not great if a
| screen needs to perform calculations that affect financial data
| like a mini POS, tax calc etc
| hetunandu wrote:
| Is the concern with running JS on the client side regarding
| security? At Appsmith we run user code inside a worker to avoid
| malicious code from accessing many browser apis. We also plan
| to add the ability to run the JS code on the server and have it
| run via web hooks for automation use cases. I wrote how we do
| it at Appsmith a few months back:
|
| https://blog.appsmith.com/evaluating-js-in-the-browser-for-a...
| SemiNormal wrote:
| So this is like a web version of Filemaker?
| Artistry121 wrote:
| This space is very hot right now. This looks amazing. I can't
| wait to use it.
|
| ToolJet, NocoDB, fabrica.dev are all projects I've found recently
| in this space.
|
| I've been really thinking a lot about how to bring tools like
| this to businesses and make them useful. I still think there's a
| lot of training and material needed to make these ultimately
| powerful. Love Open Source!
| dreamer7 wrote:
| We definitely need good reviews comparing all the different
| options. Hard to know the pros and cons of each solution
| quickly. Appsmith, Saltcorn, Budibase were three others I came
| across today
| [deleted]
| gervwyk wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! This is really cool. We created Lowdefy
| [0] to build similar apps but with a "no-gui" approach. I have
| great respect for how much work this is. Even the website looks
| great!
|
| [0] - https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy
| codingdave wrote:
| I feel like low-code apps like this have hit commodity level.
|
| A bit of history - in the late 90s, you could (and we did) build
| a multi-million dollar product doing basic content management for
| plain old web pages. That heydey lasted a couple years before
| Wordpress and other such tools came around and basic CMS was more
| of a solved problem than a unique product.
|
| The same has occurred over the years in multiple niches - a tool
| that would have been a terrific SaaS at one point gets built out,
| normalized, and well understood... to the point that it is no
| longer a unique value prop to just build a tool that solves
| problem X. You need to build the tool AND have some unique
| perspective and value prop that escalates it above all the
| others.
|
| Low-code CRUD builders with DB integration and some basic
| workflow, reporting, and security now have hit that mark. There
| have always been big players in this market (Microsoft, IBM,
| Salesforce, etc.) It is good to see smaller players coming into
| their own in recent years, and this specific one is open source,
| which is a nice differentiator between it and many others.
| ishikawa wrote:
| For me the problem is that they usually don't reach a good
| maturity level, but the idea in my opinion is very important.
| To mention the 90s again, you could do in one day an internal
| app using MS Access. Now if you want it with web interface, you
| have to think about front-end, back-end, database, devops. It
| is just too much for when you want a simple thing.
| arey_abhishek wrote:
| Pretty cool project to build in 7 weeks! Congratulations! Your
| lockdown has been way more productive than for some of us.
|
| I'm a founder of Appsmith, which Tooljet mentions in the GitHub
| project as an inspiration.
| https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmith
|
| We are an Apache 2.0 licensed internal apps builder that's being
| used by teams in Adobe, IBM, MSFT, Rappi, Swiggy, and 1000's of
| other companies.
|
| Difference vs. other projects mentioned here: 1. Community
| edition is free for unlimited users 2. Great developer
| experience(local development, debugging, & Git sync is coming
| soon) 3. Pricing model will be usage based and not user based
| dreamer7 wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch! What would you say is the main
| reasons why one should choose you over other open source
| solutions like Appsmith and Budibase?
|
| PS: Small typo on the docs -
| https://docs.tooljet.io/docs/intro/
|
| > but in case you are stuck, please feel to mail us:
| thedangler wrote:
| Is there a way to deploy a tool to end users only? Say I build
| something with this system, but I want to give end users read
| access only on my website or backend system?
| 3np wrote:
| Can you reformulate that? I've read this several time and still
| not sure what you are asking for.
|
| Do you want to restrict access? If so easiest should be to put
| a load balancer (For example haproxy, or whatever you use
| already) with auth
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Before I could give more of a look into it, the license jumped at
| me. What's the idea behind using GPLv3? Who do you want to enable
| to use this, versus whom are you trying to prevent from using
| this?
| cxr wrote:
| GPLv3 has an elaborate preamble, which should be able to answer
| some of your questions. In particular, wrt "whom are you trying
| to prevent from using this", it mentions things such as:
|
| _we wish to avoid the special danger that patents applied to a
| free program could make it effectively proprietary_
|
| and:
|
| _if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or
| for a fee, [...] You must make sure that they, too, receive or
| can get the source code_
|
| So, given that the GPL says these things, and the author has
| selected the GPL for this project, by a reasonable guess the
| answer to your question is, "people who would otherwise do/not
| do those things".
|
| Rather than adding a TODO item onto the list of the person who
| has already gifted this to us, where that item would involve
| the labor of enumerating over a set of scenarios, composing a
| response to you, and hoping that it answers your question, how
| about helping both them and yourself by inverting the workload
| and elaborating on what you mean?
|
| GPLv3 doesn't prevent anyone from using the covered software.
| Who do you think is prevented from using this? Do you consider
| the GPL to be a bad choice for some other reason, and you think
| there is a compelling reason to do something else? What are
| those reasons?
|
| And ultimately, this is software that is being provided to you,
| generously, at no cost, and the author has gone out of their
| way to let you do stuff with it that you otherwise wouldn't be
| able to do. If it doesn't suit you and you don't want to "give
| more of a look into it", then don't.
| pavlov wrote:
| Maybe your question should be more specific. What use case do
| you have for this project that you believe might be
| inconvenienced by GPL?
|
| Without that, it sounds like you're spreading FUD about GPL.
| [deleted]
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Hey @navaneethpk,
|
| Congrats on the launch! How do you plan to monetize this on the
| long term - if you are? Premium plugins? Fully managed paid
| hosted version?
| navaneethpk wrote:
| Founder here,
|
| ToolJet is a no-code platform for building & deploying custom
| internal tools. ToolJet is built using Ruby on Rails and ReactJS.
| ToolJet can connect to existing data sources of companies such as
| databases, Google sheets, API endpoints, external services, and
| more. ToolJet's drag and drop app builder can quickly create UI
| widgets such as tables, charts, forms, etc and connect these
| widgets with the data from data sources.
|
| I have been dabbling with the idea of ToolJet for a while. but
| the real progress happened over the last 7 weeks while I was in
| quarantine. One of my family members tested positive for covid
| and then came to the state-mandated lockdown. Not being able to
| step out of my home has been particularly hard, but nevertheless
| gave birth to ToolJet.
|
| I believe that the tools that require access to sensitive data
| should be self-hosted ( data never leaves the premises) and open-
| source ( modify the software to fit organization-specific
| requirements ).
| e12e wrote:
| This looks very interesting... But no tests?
|
| I'm not 100% happy with a project at work, where we're building
| out a jsonapi from a legacy rails app (part rewrite in-place,
| part move to react for front-end) - and after setting it up
| rswag with integration tests generating swagger schemas has
| been pretty nice. Not quite decided on what I think about
| activemodel::serializer... But it mostly works, without too
| much tweaking.
|
| I've also adopted some ideas from:
|
| https://github.com/guillaumebriday/jsonapi-scopes
|
| For filtering/sorting - I think something like it should be in
| rails, really.
|
| Rswag: https://github.com/rswag/rswag
| navaneethpk wrote:
| Rswag looks cool, will try it out. There are tests for rails
| controllers and I have recently setup Cypress for component
| testing, will be focusing on tests the coming days.
| e12e wrote:
| > There are tests for rails controllers
|
| I only found one:
|
| https://github.com/ToolJet/ToolJet/blob/develop/test/contro
| l...
|
| The others appear to be empty scaffolds (which imnho is
| worse than no tests, really), eg:
|
| https://github.com/ToolJet/ToolJet/blob/develop/test/contro
| l... require "test_helper" class
| FoldersControllerTest < ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest
| # test "the truth" do # assert true # end
| end
|
| Same for empty model tests etc - I'd strongly encourage
| removing them - as they just add noise.
|
| Btw, if not doing tdd, time is probably better spent on
| integration tests than controller/model tests. Main
| challenge I've found with rails projects that were put in
| use with _no_ tests, is there 's a big effort to set up
| test data/fixtures from scratch. One option can sometimes
| be to just set up a test database with real data (database
| dump as a fixture).
|
| > and I have recently setup Cypress for component testing
|
| That's nice, and probably a good focus for a project like
| this.
|
| Ed: as for mocking/integration testing apis - which might
| be useful here, there's "vcr": https://github.com/vcr/vcr
| foxbee wrote:
| Wow! Building this in 7 weeks is an incredible feat. I am the
| cofounder of Budibase - an open source alt to Retool, Mendix,
| Outsystems - and have been building it for around 2 years now.
|
| It's an incredible space and solves a burning problem for
| engineers, IT teams and business users.
|
| We're seeing major benefits of being open source, with the like
| of the NHS, Amazon, Deloitte and other major orgs choosing
| Budibase over proprietary alternatives, so I would say your
| decision to offer self-hosting was a good one.
|
| As much as we are probably seen as competitors, I wish you well
| and I am happy to share notes if you would like a call?
|
| https://github.com/Budibase/budibase
| sdesol wrote:
| > Wow! Building this in 7 weeks is an incredible feat.
|
| Here is an analysis of Tooljet development in the last 90
| days
|
| https://public-001.gitsense.com/insights/github/repos?q=wind.
| ..
|
| I also did one for budibase as well
|
| https://public-001.gitsense.com/insights/github/repos?q=wind.
| ..
|
| Disclaimer: I'm the creator of GitSense
| foxbee wrote:
| Awesome tool. Have you considered adding support/analytics
| around Github discussions?
| sdesol wrote:
| I actually want to index everything in the software
| development lifecycle, which will include GitHub
| discussions. The issue right now is I'm a sole founder
| and I can only implement so many features and I am
| looking for investors right now (ping me if you think you
| can help with introductions) to tackle what you
| suggested.
|
| I really do want to index everything from meetings,
| emails, time between design docs and so forth. Indexing
| GitHub discussions is very important since it takes
| effort to engage people and I want to best capture effort
| so that developers can say "1 line of code" took more
| effort than you can imagine.
| foxbee wrote:
| Awesome. It's a big task, and I wish you all the best.
| Not sure I can help with investors though.
| redstripe wrote:
| Hi there, nice site.
|
| I'm really like this combined side scrolling table + graph
| component you use on the pulse page. Looking at the source
| I see a mention of echarts in the html but I don't think
| I've seen anything like that in their examples.
|
| Did you build this yourself as a custom rendered chart or
| is this something that someone else built?
| sdesol wrote:
| All the charts are by echarts. For the timeline chart
| (the one in the pulse view) think of it as a scatter
| chart that is zoomed in. echarts provides labels and
| drawing lines and other things which is how I was able to
| create the timeline chart.
| riku_iki wrote:
| Why no LoC included, it seems most useful metric. Also bugs
| filed/fixed would be helpful too.
|
| Thank you for your effort!
| sdesol wrote:
| > Why no LoC included
|
| LoC invokes PTSD for many developers and I honestly want
| to do it right, which will take a bit effort and thinking
| on my part. For example, when providing LoC, I want to be
| able to break it down into useful information like
| (isolated code, used here and there) and so forth.
|
| I want LoC to help us understand the significance of
| going from one revision to another, so that LoC can be
| used to help us drive actionable insights.
|
| Edit: Just realized I never addressed your other points
| which is I do want to index and provide insights into
| everything in the software development lifecycle, it's
| just that I'm bound by resource constraints right now.
| gervwyk wrote:
| Nice! GitSense is really cool. I recently enjoyed this
| dashboard [0], which is more basic and focused on tracking
| project popularity. Is there a way for me to add Lowdefy
| [1] to GitSense?
|
| [0] - https://osschott.metabaseapp.com/public/dashboard/ece
| 8baa7-7... [1] - https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy
| hangtwenty wrote:
| GitSense seems very useful. Constructive feedback about the
| UI: replace the (straggler?) serif font with the sans serif
| font you're using elsewhere on the page
| sdesol wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I'm the sole founder behind
| GitSense and to be honest, there are too many stragglers
| and things I should have done better. It's just that my
| time is pulled in so many different directions, with the
| business side of things occupying most of it right now.
|
| Thanks for commenting and yeah I do want to ensure
| everything is sans serif. I think I get a pass though,
| since I do have the beta label on the tool :-)
| swyx wrote:
| I have to say I was very impressed when I tried out Budibase
| and was able to create a CRUD app out of the box without
| looking at docs. You guys are easier to use than Retool --
| and self hostable/open source!!
|
| i have no idea what it's like to work on this problem for 2
| years but really looking forward to see what you become. the
| youtube updates are super helpful btw pls keep that up
| foxbee wrote:
| Appreciate your feedback. With the latest release, we're in
| a much better position to release quicker, and communicate
| better.
|
| We're still in beta, and yet to launch to Hackernews, PH,
| etc, so looking forward to that over the next few months.
| moosebear847 wrote:
| Would this be considered product thread hijacking? The
| 'compliment' could also be interpreted as a disguised subtle
| diss (7wk product vs 2yr one)..
| foxbee wrote:
| It's not a diss. It is a compliment.
| navaneethpk wrote:
| Thanks :)
|
| Sure, would love to talk. Please send me an email so that we
| can schedule a call. ( navaneeth@tooljet.io )
| alexkreidler wrote:
| Would you two be able to share some take-aways from that
| conversation at some point? Maybe write up a short
| comparison of the projects as they are now and any
| differences in roadmap/vision that could be relevant.
|
| I always appreciate when OSS projects put in effort to
| understand and position themselves in relation to
| competitors (or potential collaborators).
|
| Also want to mention some open-source React visual drag and
| drop page editors that might be useful for inspiration or
| to eliminate possible duplicate work. There's OpenChakra
| [0] and Blocks [1], which are apps, and then there's
| craft.js, a library that aims to modularize "the building
| blocks of a page editor" and seems to have more emphasis on
| customizing the actual editor UI.
|
| Best of luck to you both!
|
| [0] https://github.com/premieroctet/openchakra [1]
| https://github.com/blocks/blocks [2]
| https://github.com/prevwong/craft.js
| foxbee wrote:
| awesome. I'll ping you later
| Artistry121 wrote:
| Hey! I've been following Budibase too You're doing great too.
|
| I want to do implementations for projects like this and
| trainings around it. There is so much power in these tools
| its amazing.
|
| Can we talk too? andrew AT amescher.com
| foxbee wrote:
| Hey - of course we can. I'll email you ASAP
| mike_chuckles wrote:
| I've been playing with this for a little while now, really
| like the fact this takes over a lot of the management issues
| as well like handling email templating and all those nitty
| gritty bits that would otherwise be a pain!
|
| Looking forward to seeing where this goes over the next
| while!
| foxbee wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. Our latest release has received
| great feedback to date. There are a lot of IT professionals
| out there who don't want to deal with onboarding,
| adding/removing users and forgot password flows.
|
| I'd love to hear more about your use cases if you have the
| time:
|
| calendly.com dash budibase
| mike_chuckles wrote:
| I'll get in touch, thanks!
| victor106 wrote:
| This looks cool. What did you use to generate the
| documentation? https://docs.tooljet.io/docs/intro/
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Looks like Docusaurus.
|
| Check out Wappalyzer[0], it's an open source plug-in that
| tells you what technologies a website is using.
|
| 0. https://github.com/AliasIO/wappalyzer
| navaneethpk wrote:
| Docusaurus - It's easy to customise and good enough even
| without customisations.
| samfisher83 wrote:
| Appsmith is also open source, but this looks great. Can't
| believe you knocked it out in 7 weeks.
| pplonski86 wrote:
| Same here, the website and product looks impressive.
| @navaneethpk how many hours a day have you been coding? Do
| you use some ready templates or boilerplates?
| navaneethpk wrote:
| 8-10 hours a day :) Using Tabler for builiding the user
| interface helped me speed up the development.
| ianpurton wrote:
| Any ideas how you will differentiate yourself from Appsmith?
| (which looks similar but more developed)
| seeekr wrote:
| Impressive amount of work for 7 weeks! Looking forward to
| trying it out, super welcome tool!
| stanislavb wrote:
| It demonstrates what a skilled Rails developer can achieve by
| himself. It's not a surprise that so many successful startups
| are still built with Ruby on Rails regularly.
| ishikawa wrote:
| That is a very great job. Congrats! My feedback is to make it
| flexible on charts and easy to create admin panels.
| jawns wrote:
| Can you give a brief breakdown of what features are the same
| between ToolJet and a service like Retool, what features are
| different, which ones are intentionally left out, and how close
| to feature parity you're hoping to get?
| navaneethpk wrote:
| There are many similar features such as: a) The ability to
| fetch & merge data from multiple data sources b) Widgets such
| as tables, charts & forms
|
| The goal is to build more connectors and widgets while
| ignoring features that will not makes sense for majority of
| the users. Example of a feature that's intentionally left out
| (for now) is the schema browser for databases.
|
| Also, thanks for pointing out the typo, fixed it :)
| pplonski86 wrote:
| Congratulations on launch!
|
| Got a question. What do you think, is it possible to create
| internal tools as desktop apps that doesn't need servers/internet
| connection? I understand that your product is web based, so
| doesnt have such desktop-app feature. Can you recommend any no-
| code tool for building desktop based apps?
| navaneethpk wrote:
| Budibase have a desktop app, not sure if the apps built can run
| without internet.
| FractalHQ wrote:
| They just phased it out to focus on the browser version iirc
| sam0x17 wrote:
| For people in the ruby/rails/active record ecosystem, rails_admin
| as always remains a fantastic choice
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(page generated 2021-06-07 23:01 UTC)