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You can do this for free today using open source libraries. https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html used to run entirely on a Google F
by Zaheer 7y ago
You can do this for free today using open source libraries. https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html used to run entirely on a Google Form + Spreadsheet and still backed by one.
Submit form: https://stackoverflow.com/a/37743080 https://stackoverflow.com/a/37743080
Get data from sheet: https://github.com/jsoma/tabletop https://github.com/jsoma/tabletop
Happy to answer any questions.
- shivensinha4 7y agoStein is completely open-source itself, and the documentation includes instructions for self-hosting. It consolidates all such features in a single API. Find it at https://github.com/SteinHQ/Stein https://github.com/SteinHQ/Stein
- Zaheer 7y agoOne benefit of approach I mentioned is that there's nothing to host. All just client-side code. Although I do see the use for hosting: latency for loading data from Google Sheets isn't great and adding a cache helped in my case.
- IloveHN84 7y agoIn this case, what have you used for caching?
- felipap 7y agoReminded me of the top comment on the "Show HN" of Dropbox, back in 2007: "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem." ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- TeMPOraL 7y agoWhile this is not a good predictor of business success, it's still a viable alternative for some. Arguably, self-hosting is today more important than ever, given the unreliability and shady practices of many cloud solution vendors.
- miopa 7y agoI'm totally expecting from Google to discontinue, restrict or change the API for Google Sheets at one point. It will likely be in the moment when it's hardest for you to timely update your app.
- quickthrower2 7y agoWell the advantage of free is not just cost but freedom to modify the code, hack it and also privacy advantages. Same goes for Dropbox vs rsync.
- nothrabannosir 7y agoInstead of as a disparagement of the product, you could see this as a no-judgement PSA for anyone interested in and capable of running such an alternative. Incidentally I am precisely looking for something like this so for me that’s valuable :)
- close04 7y agoI think the idea is solid but the reliance on Google (or other provider) might be the weak point. The cloud may be great but still a gamble if you're totally at the whim of a provider that at any point can make changes that leave you out in the rain. And Google is no stranger to this kind of thing. Dropbox came at a time when people were seeing the downsides of private solutions and the cloud was there to mitigate them. These days people are starting to see the downsides of relying on the cloud and are moving to private solutions. The main difference is today's "private solution" is likely to be a self-hosted "cloud". So it's not that we're going back in time a decade, it's just choosing a combination of "private" and "cloud" that maximizes the advantages and minimizes the disadvantages.