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Show HN: Fieldbook: Lightweight Database with a Spreadsheet UI and a REST API
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- auston 11y agoThis looks really awesome. Can you lock columns or rows to prevent people from changing them?
- benbernard 11y agoUnfortunately we don't yet have that particular feature... But we definitely want to do something like that in the future. What are you thinking you'd use it for (we love to collect information like that for when we do implement the feature). Obviously, using the API you could build a restricted interface on top of fieldbook, but that probably isn't what your looking for, I understand :). We're also considering doing a mode where you can't change any of the metadata (sheets/fields) but can add/remove/change rows.
- jasoncrawford 11y agoThanks! We're working on a feature that will let you share a book “metadata-readonly”: allow editing of rows/cells but not the structure of the book (sheets, fields, links, formulas, etc.) Longer-term we might offer more fine-grained locking or permissions control.
- benbernard 11y agoHey Folks! I'm the CTO of Fieldbook, we're really proud of what we've built here. In particular, I really like our API explorer that allows you to run real node code right in the browser to explore our API. (And see our realtime updates in action on the same page). That feature is powered by Tonic (https://tonicdev.com https://tonicdev.com) Its mad fast to setup a database with a REST api with Fieldbook, and we'd love to hear what you think / what could be better / etc.
- codezero 11y agoWhat does the premium plan offer that the free one doesn't?
- tmikaeld 11y agoAnd what are the usage limits?
- benbernard 11y agoWe want you to use Fieldbook as your database, so we don't limit the number of api calls or books you can have in Fieldbook! (we hate when you run up against an artificial limit and have to scramble to get your product back online). :) We don't scale as far as we want to right now. For a good experience, we're limited to about 10k rows in a book. Definitely something we want to improve a LOT in the future. More info here: http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/data-size-limits http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/data-size-limits
- kevinr 11y agoGlad to hear you folks are looking at scaling. I love the idea, and for small stuff the app so far is great. My book with around 2500 rows and 20 columns I find to be significantly slower than I prefer, though. Unclear how much of that is backend versus frontend, but definitely a limiting factor for my use right now. In an ideal world it would feel as snappy as Google Sheets.
- benbernard 11y agoDefinitely hear you! We are working on some performance improvements right now, if you contact us in app, we might be able to figure out what is happening with your data. 2500 rows and 20 columns should still be snappy!
- jasoncrawford 11y agoThis is front-end and should be fixed soon, literally working on it now. Thanks!
- jasoncapriati 11y agoI've used Fieldbook a few times. It is incredibly neat.
- thetmkay 11y agoI've been using Fieldbook a little bit, and even playing around with their API. It's a great product I'm going to use more. Big fan - there have been several side projects where I've wanted to use Google Sheets as a prototype DB - with the simpler API and better relationship model, I'm going to use Fieldbook from now on.
- nekitamo 11y agoCan multiple people edit the same spreadsheet at the same time? If so, are their changes displayed live?
- benbernard 11y agoYep! Definitely. We don't (yet) show cursors and who is connected like google docs does, but you do see changes replicated to all windows / users in real time. You can even see your own real-time changes from API calls in realtime while looking at your book.
- tlrobinson 11y agoNeat. How does this compare to Airtable? https://airtable.com/ https://airtable.com/
- jasoncrawford 11y agoThanks! I think we've focused a lot more on relational support. For instance, on a detail page, you can view and edit all linked records, and add new ones inline: http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/go-beyond-the-grid http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/go-beyond-the-grid We have a full-fledged query UI: http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/focus-on-relevant-items http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/focus-on-relevant-items And we have a grouped view (think Trello meets spreadsheets), which is great for any kind of pipeline/kanban view: http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/track-a-workflow http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/track-a-workflow
- jamesmcintyre 11y agoJust an idea to share, from someone who's been building business apps using Knack's visual builder for the past year, I think a killer combination would be fieldbook's friendly UX for the database with a "marketplace" of front-end "plug-and-play" UI modules. So in fieldbook I would create and save views for the database with your current UI but then I could plug ready-made UI modules on top of that database view and then customize the front-end UI. Ideally these UI modules would be free or pay web-based or native. I know it's extremely important to strike the balance of complexity, capability and UX so this area is notoriously difficult to tread but I think whatever solution does it right without sacrificing customization extensibility is going to win big! Fieldbook looks great and I hope it keeps getting better!
- jasoncrawford 11y agoThanks! Good ideas, and yes, you nailed it: the right balance of complexity and functionality is key.
- iheartmemcache 11y ago
- dsr_ 11y agoIt looks very nice. But I can't integrate it into a project if I can't guarantee that it will run even if Fieldbook-the-company changes business models next year. When can I deploy a self-hosted version, and how much will that cost?
- benbernard 11y agoWe definitely intend to be in this for the long haul! We will always let your data out of Fieldbook, we already support CSV downloads of any sheet or view, and we are thinking about a wide variety of export and sync options to other services / data formats. I understand being leary of business model changes. While we can't make any guarantees in the wild world of startups, we can say that we want a free tier to remain forever, and would give plenty of warning if it were ever to change. A little more information available here: http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/security-and-privacy http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/security-and-privacy We don't currently have any short term plans for a self-hosted version.
- teamrating 11y agoIts not that difficult to use Google Spreadsheets as a database - here's an app I put together in a couple of hours to allow people to rate players after a soccer game - currently used by a reddit sub: http://www.teamrating.com http://www.teamrating.com
- jasoncrawford 11y agoNice! One of the key advantages of Fieldbook is actual relational support. You can create a relational model by “linking” sheets, and then linked records are returned by the API. Also, the Fieldbook UI is more suited to being used as a database than spreadsheets are. It's much easier to do queries, for instance, and sorting/filtering won't mess up your book. Lots more on Fieldbook vs. spreadsheets here: http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/what-is-fieldbook http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/what-is-fieldbook
- soared 11y agoInteresting. But I have no idea what it does.. that picture and bullet points don't really tell me much. I want screenshots!
- toisanji 11y agoI would use an open source version of this immediately. I've written several hacked up projects using google spreadsheets and it works, but its unreliable. I would not want to use a smaller 3rd party service as I would be afraid of the service getting shutdown or neglected. I would be much more inclined to use and pay for this service if they also open sourced it. Maybe run it like wordpress, they make a lot of money :)
- rudasn 11y agoSame here. I'm really excited about what these people (and others) are doing in this space, but the lack of an open source code and the service lock-in (mostly) are huge turn offs for me. I've started building a prototype of this idea using PouchDB/CouchDB (data is stored locally in PouchDB, synced to your own CouchDB server or Cloudant). As with most of my side projects, it remains abandoned waiting for some love.
- fiatjaf 11y agoWhere is your PouchDB/CouchDB prototype? Can I see it? I want take some ideas from it, perhaps fork it.
- iheartmemcache 11y agoWordpress is kind of a "one-off" in the same way that Farmville and Minecraft were (i.e. right place, right time -- Newspro and Perl CGI was falling out of fashion, PHP4/MySQL3.23 were common everywhere, shared hosting was easy, and Wordpress came bundled with CPanel IIRC). A more sustainable business model would be, I think, the safe middle-ground for both the consumer and the developer-- the Atlassian model. Offer an absurdly cheap .jar/.dmg/.exe out of the box which you can run locally for the end-user/small-business (what is it like a dollar a user a year for the self-hosted binaries?) and limit it to 5 or 10 seats. If the acquire-hire-kill by GoogAplTwitSquare happens, you still have a local copy of your data and the ability to migrate off the platform. If >(5||10) employees are using the application as a critical component of your business, making the seat-fee price-jump at that point is worth it (value provided > cost of seats, even at a few hundred dollars a month).
- m0rganic 11y agoDisclaimer: early Kinvey engineer here. Doesn't sound too far off from Kinvey and Parse except for the fact that MBaaS services have been around a lot longer and have much more robust mobile and web SDKs.
- jasoncrawford 11y agoWe don't think of it as BaaS. Instead, we think of it first as a spreadsheet-like UI, and it also has an API. The use cases people have been most excited about need both. For instance, set up a configuration database or CMS for your app--an engineer can create the schema and read via the API, then anyone on the team can view and edit the configuration. With the BaaS offerings I've seen, you get the database and API, but you have to build any UI you want yourself, including any web or admin UI.
- m0rganic 11y ago>With the BaaS offerings I've seen, you get the database and API, but you have to build any UI you want yourself Not true, you get a spreadsheet data grid like UI out of the box. They are more general purpose - that is true.
- cpr 11y agoHow does this differ from DabbleDB, which seemed to have all this and more? (Sadly went nowhere and subsumed by Twitter.)
- j45 11y agoHopefully it differs in that it will continue to exist and not be acqui-sunsetted.
- jasoncrawford 11y agoI didn't learn about Dabble until after it was gone, so I only know it from watching the demo video and talking to one of the founders. The spirit is similar and I think we have a lot of shared vision. I think our UI for creating links (relations) and for doing queries is unique, both were developed through hundreds of usability tests to be both accessible for novices and satisfying for power users. Check it out.
- marvel_boy 11y agoAnyone remembers similar product DabbleDB? Or I'm too old?
- jasoncrawford 11y agoYup, we've had a few conversations with Avi, one of the Dabble founders; he's been helpful with advice and feedback.
- atonse 11y agoYes this reminded me of DabbleDB. It's just a shame (for everyone except the founders/employees) that they were acquired and shut down. Because of what happened with DabbleDB, I worry about these awesome startups getting acquired. Again, great for the founders, but not for customers.
- asp2insp 11y agoThis looks excellent! I recently started writing something similar for my phone since I needed something more flexible than the standard todo/gtd apps. Do you have plans for a 1st party mobile client?
- jasoncrawford 11y agoRight now there is basic mobile web access. Definitely going to do a native mobile app!
- asp2insp 11y agoGreat to hear! I've been playing with the product for a few minutes and I really like it so far. Lots of very nice touches! I think I found a bug -- If I give 2 columns the same name, the resulting JSON field gets overridden: http://i.imgur.com/KA9mAeI.png http://i.imgur.com/KA9mAeI.png Maybe display an error if I name 2 columns the same? Or disambiguate somehow in the JSON?
- jasoncrawford 11y agoCorrect, we don't handle this case right now and one of the fields will get shadowed. We'll handle this more gracefully in the future; for now we recommend unique column names :-)
- DHJSH 11y agoIt would be nice to get something modern to replace what people used to do with FileMaker. This may be it.
- triangleman 11y agoHi DHJSH, I just wanted to let you know that you have been "shadowbanned", which means all of your comments are dead on HN by default. I vouched for this comment to make it visible, but mainly in order to reply to you and let you know that you have been banned.
- DHJSH 11y agoThanks. This usually happens to anyone who doesn't echo the politically correct narrative here.
- oceanallin 11y agoThe UI is just gorgeous IMHO. Can you share which frameworks you used ? Did you use a template for the front page ?
- jasoncrawford 11y agoThanks! Not much of a framework on the front end, but we do take advantage of Bootstrap and Backbone.
- Im_a_throw_away 11y agoThat looks like a really well made product, awesome UI! What are some real world use case for using fieldbook?
- benbernard 11y agoThanks! We actually have a few user success stories, and most of our templates are directly from use cases we've seen people use. Here is a story of Data Analysis tracking sales leads: https://medium.com/@fieldbook/data-analysis-tracks-sales-leads-in-fieldbook-696be751f693#.jpoj426f9 https://medium.com/@fieldbook/data-analysis-tracks-sales-lea... And here is one about how Continuum Analytics uses us to track their professional service work: https://medium.com/@fieldbook/continuum-analytics-manages-professional-service-work-with-fieldbook-a0ecfeb617a5#.w0zix0qae https://medium.com/@fieldbook/continuum-analytics-manages-pr...
- jasoncrawford 11y agoThanks! Real-world use cases include project tracking and sales/CRM. More here: http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/what-is-fieldbook#what-is-fieldbook-good-for http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/what-is-fieldbook#what-is-fie... Also check out our templates for more examples: https://fieldbook.com/templates https://fieldbook.com/templates
- PhilWright 11y agoThe user interface looks beautiful and I like the innovation for the group/sorting/filtering. Allowing all three to be defined using drop downs within the single area is really neat. Fast to add and compact in space. How does it handle data types? Can you put any type of data into any cell? If I want a column that is numbers is there anything that stops a user adding a string to one of the cells by mistake?
- jasoncrawford 11y agoBy default you can put any type of data into a cell, like spreadsheets. If you want some input validation, you can add an optional input type to a cell. So you could set a number type on a cell, and then if someone tries to type a non-number, they'll get an error. http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/input-and-formatting#input-types http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/input-and-formatting#input-ty...
- tyingq 11y agoLooks like the beginnings of a QuickBase competitor, which would be welcome...Intuit's pricing model is terrible. I had high hopes for DabbleDB before Twitter bought them and shut it all down.
- medell 11y agoI went down the road of working with QuickBase, meeting their implementation consultants. It was classic old school software company. Left hand not talking to the right, bloated, unresponsive, just trying to sell you. TrackVia is another interesting alternative, they started as an Excel replacement (and very good one at that), but have since gone more towards mobile and simplicity in the new version. Knack is in the conversation as well, but it seems like Fieldbook & AirTable are now the ones to watch.
- snehesht 11y agoIt's an interesting idea, However if it's not self-hosted then I think their reach of customers is very limited. We all know most of the businesses run on spreadsheets and most of them don't want to share that information with anyone.Unless you handle this problem with run time encryption or provide a self-hosted version It's difficult to land lot of customers.
- orliesaurus 11y agois this a bit like sheetsu?
- michaeloblak 11y agoIt's someway similar. The difference is that Sheetsu.com use Google Spreadsheet as a storage.
- zubairq 11y agoCongratulations Jason. it looks awesome and has come a long way in the last year.
- Nazariy1995 11y agoThis is so awesome. Easy to use, set up in seconds, and is mobile friendly. Nice! Can't believe no else has something like this.