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Ask HN: What's the fastest tool for basic CRUD?

• aosaigh 7y ago
  Are you looking for a framework or a more complete tool? Django or Ruby are good for putting together CRUD tools very quickly. If you make use of their ecosystem of libraries you'll be able to put a Bootstrap CRUD app together in no time (assuming you have webdev experience).
• yen223 7y ago
  I've found success using Google Sheets as a backing datastore for some automation projects of mine. Google Sheets has a rest API that you can use.
• andybak 7y ago
  If you want a database-backed CRUD with extra business logic then it's hard to beat the Django admin. You get support for common cases out of the box and extending/overriding the normal behaviour is fairly straightforward. It looks fairly presentable and has a non-awful UI. Certainly not state of the art but good enough for non-public facing stuff.
  • rossdavidh 7y ago
    I have used the Django admin as a way to get non-technical users entering data for basic CRUD, which is pretty much what it was developed for originally as I understand it. Its appearance sends the right message (non-threatening, but obviously not public-facing), and they seem to take to it readily.
  • 1337shadow 7y ago
    For Django, the trick is to implement an MVC pattern: let a class sit in-between a model and its set of views and pilot the views from there, like the admin, drf and others. However, the admin does not leverage the Django ecosystem, django-tables2, django-filter, and so on. Also, it's kind of moving slowly because they must try to respect backward compatibility. I maintain CRUDLFA+ and I love it: - lets each view define its own url generation method: the controller will use that to generate the urls for a model - each controller defines a get_queryset method which has a request parameter, allowing you to define what objects a user may see - each view defines a has_perm method, as such a user may see a bunch of objects, but not necessarily execute all views on it, - the default list view wraps django-tables2, django-filter, django-search, and generates a per-object menu, by iterating over each view of the controller and testing it with has_perm, as such a user will see an object menu with each view it can execute on an object, with no overhead - allows you to override views in many ways - works with non-managed models (models that are not backed with a database table) - can be used for frontend pages too (admin is really limited to being a back-office), Clearly, CRUDLFA+ goes beyond "basic crud", but I would never code a Django view without it ever again though. However, so far I make it for my personal use and even though it's been in use on governmental production for a couple of years now, I wouldn't recommend it for beginners. If you're a Django expert and get your kicks out of trying new patterns then you might spend some good times with it. https://yourlabs.io/oss/yourlabs https://yourlabs.io/oss/yourlabs https://gitpitch.com/yourlabs/crudlfap https://gitpitch.com/yourlabs/crudlfap We're in the (slow) process of replacing Jinja2 in it with Ryzom ( https://yourlabs.io/oss/ryzom https://yourlabs.io/oss/ryzom ) , a component-based HTML renderer which supports data-binding and that we are looking forward to integrate or isomorphic research (from https://yourlabs.io/oss/chp https://yourlabs.io/oss/chp ) into. When that's over we will release v1.
    • raihansaputra 7y ago
      This is really interesting. Will take a look on how this works for me!
    • raihansaputra 7y ago
      I'm really interested to try, but the yourlabs.io repo is locked down. Where can I see the CRDLFA+ codebase?
• serverQuestion 7y ago
  ruby on rails?
• rumanator 7y ago
  For those like me who never heard the term "CRUD screen": https://wiki.c2.com/?CrudScreen https://wiki.c2.com/?CrudScreen
• dyeje 7y ago
  Ruby on Rails without a doubt. You can even take it a step further and use ActiveAdmin.
  • tluyben2 7y ago
    I think it is a matter of taste or experience language wise but I would say Django with the admin.
    • auston 7y ago
      Have used both extensively. I like the Django ORM better than ActiveRecord but love the conventions and magic you get with rails + ActiveAdmin!
      • tluyben2 7y ago
        I have used both for years as well and I cannot stand the ‘magic’ ;) Hence my comment about taste.
• tluyben2 7y ago
  There are a lot of nocode/lowcode tools with batteries included if you do not mind paying a monthly fee (although some do not even require that; only a one-off fee). Airtable, Bubble and many others make it really easy to create CRUD apps. There are also open source solutions (I did not try so no idea how good they are) like [0]. [0] https://garrylachman.github.io/ElectroCRUD/ https://garrylachman.github.io/ElectroCRUD/
• focom 7y ago
  There is also https://github.com/strapi/strapi https://github.com/strapi/strapi which is a CMS for rest api. You only have to write a frontend.
  • kostarelo 7y ago
    Have you actually used it in production? I would love to try it but I'm hesitating in case it's still not ready for a more complicated project.
• ksec 7y ago
  If you want No Code solution, AirTable and Coda. On one hand I sort of wish more business knew about it as it would likely simplify most of their work load. On the other hand I dont want that to happen as it gives current businesses advantage. For Coding Solution, ( Incoming Unpopular opinion ) if you dont mind modern PHP, ( which is a lot better than old PHP) Laravel [1] is to my mind undoubtedly the king of CRUD framework. The whole ecosystem is, and continue to be outpacing and growing faster than Rails ecosystem. Which makes me very envy. If you dont like PHP, then Ruby Rails. [1] https://laravel.com https://laravel.com
  • karlshea 7y ago
    And for a non-free addon, Laravel Nova was amazing for the admin CRUD for my API-only site.
  • mcculley 7y ago
    Are organizations using AirTable with LDAP or Active Directory? I see there are some connectors, but it does not appear to have first class support.
  • 40four 7y ago
    I think the hate has gone too far on PHP. I work in Laravel for work, and it continues to impress me. Such a pleasure! Also, Laravel collections are amazing. They make working with arrays and transforming data a breeze.
    • ksec 7y ago
      I still dont like PHP in any sort of way, as a programming language it really is the bottom of my list. At least modern php is easier to swallow. But Laravel, the amount of things that could get done in so little time. I think laravel took all the good ideas from Rails and ran way further ahead with it.
    • aphextron 7y ago
      >I think the hate has gone too far on PHP It was very well deserved back in the pre-7.0 days, when it was common to have horrific spaghetti projects with zero structure, global variables/functions everywhere, and all kinds of logic (including database calls) mixed into view templates. Modern PHP is a whole different world, but most people will simply choose something else now because that stigma is impossible to lose, and finding dedicated PHP developers is increasingly uncommon.
• seagull 7y ago
  https://tryretool.com https://tryretool.com (YC W17) is great for this use case.
• brandly 7y ago
  I've liked using Parse. https://parseplatform.org/ https://parseplatform.org/
• cpursley 7y ago
  React Admin is awesome for simple low code CRUD applications. https://marmelab.com/react-admin https://marmelab.com/react-admin Combine React Admin with Hasura (automatic GraphQL on top of PostgreSQL) and you can build an entire back office admin suite (API endpoints and admin front end) in a matter of hours. https://hasura.io https://hasura.io This adaptor connects react-admin with Hasura: https://github.com/Steams/ra-data-hasura-graphql https://github.com/Steams/ra-data-hasura-graphql Here's a reference application I put together: https://github.com/cpursley/react-admin-low-code https://github.com/cpursley/react-admin-low-code
  • ajsharp 7y ago
    blinks eyes Wow Hasura + react admin look incredible. Thanks for this.
    • elwell 7y ago
      It's a great combo. Been fortunate to be able to use React + Hasura + Clojure(Script) + Re-Frame at my job; great stack to work with.
  • hyperpape 7y ago
    What's the backwards compatibility/breakage story? I think that's a critical question for any tool that wants to be the go to place for this kind of task. It has to be the kind of project you can run for years, making small changes to, and still be secure/deployable/upgradable.
    • gavinray 7y ago
      Hasura allows you to use a pre-existing Postgres database as its source. Alternatively, you can either build a schema from scratch in SQL, with some other tool, or use Hasuras web console which has a visual schema-building and relationship-building UI. The team takes pretty good care of upholding backwards compatibility -- as it stands, most of the new features they have been working on are niceties outside of the scope of basic CRUD functionality and permissions/authorization (which they have pretty much nailed at this point). Hasura Engine instances are versioned, and if you like, you could also opt to just never upgrade.
• Saphyel 7y ago
  Look for api platform ( https://github.com/api-platform/api-platform https://github.com/api-platform/api-platform ) otherwise flask rest api is another great option
• artpar 7y ago
  I have been working on this from some time. Checkout https://github.com/daptin/daptin https://github.com/daptin/daptin I have been deferring another show hn since the last one, since I am always in the middle of adding one more feature :p my overall goal in daptin is to build something reliable which can run for years without needing any maintenance. Some things to show this is that its written in golang and I build static targets for all target hosts, the thing is open-sourced and licensed to be used without fear. As for the features, I will try to list some here: - YAML/JSON based data declaration - CRUD api implementing https://jsonapi.org/ https://jsonapi.org/ - GraphQL api - Definable actions, for custom apis - Integration to any 3rd party api based on swagger/openapi spec - Runs on mysql/postgres/sqlite For more advance features: - SMTP server, IMAP server - Self generated cert/ Acme TLS generation support - Encrypted columns - Asset columns (file/image/binary store) - Asset columns backed by cloud storage (like ftp/disk/gdrive/s3/bb and many) - Native OAuth/3rd party login support - Exposing cloud store folders as static websites I have built a lot of apps on daptin over some time now and I love that it has become what I envisioned it to be.
  • ComSubVie 7y ago
    That's a great set of features! I'll try it on my next prototype. Especially the OpenAPI export is great; I had always problems with automatically generating it (in go/node.js/.net core).
    • artpar 7y ago
      Not only openapi export, but you can import openapi/swagger specs and use them in actions. Effectively third party integrations. And I forgot to mention table and row level user authentication permissions and groups.
  • fenesiistvan 7y ago
    Do you plan MS SQL integration?
    • artpar 7y ago
      I haven't planned mssql, mostly because the library which covers most sql dialects in golang currently supports just those 3(mysql, postgres, sqlite) . I can look into it but I don't know what's the fastest way to get a mssql instance right now :) it might not actually be a huge task.
• Ozzie_osman 7y ago
  Django admin, with Django rest if you want to easily add APIs.
  • jeanmichelx 7y ago
    Django has everything a simple CRUD needs built-in, and migrations, which you don't need now, but will need if your project is successful. Highly recommended.
  • Ozzie_osman 7y ago
    Also, pro-tip: host it on Heroku for ease if you're not anticipating a ton of traffic. Literally minutes to set up and almost no maintenance overhead going forward.
  • aphextron 7y ago
    +1 for Django. It is well structured, battle tested and highly scalable. You get all the simplicity and "batteries included" features of Rails with much better performance and RESTful API support.
• sansnomme 7y ago
  For non-web, give the Red programming language a try. Java is also another good one. I am afraid there just isn't a good, robust, free and open source system when it comes to client-server stuff. Rapid development tools also tend to be less mature on Linux, compared to OS X and Windows (Mac and Windows have a rich tradition of business/enterprise rapid prototyping e.g. FileMaker, HyperCard, Visual FoxPro). If you are on the Microsoft stack (and don't need gimmicks like multiple screen size support, Material-style shadows and animations), the standard WinForms system is also quite productive. I heard that the new SwiftUI system is starting to bring back the spirit of rapid development too though I have no tried it myself. These days "no-code" systems are also making a comeback with half a dozen new SaaSes showing up on HN every other week.
  • 9214 7y ago
    Red is cross-platform and works pretty well on distros that support 32-bit libraries, GTK backend is also fully functional [1], so I don't get why Linux is excluded from your list. Red author also plans to port Cheyenne web server at some point after 0.7.0 release. [2] [1]: https://github.com/red/red/tree/GTK https://github.com/red/red/tree/GTK [2]: https://www.cheyenne-server.org/ https://www.cheyenne-server.org/
  • demosthenex 7y ago
    Did you have any specific examples of Red for non-web CRUD interfaces?
• sinnombre 7y ago
  Jhipster if you want to do it in Java. Do check it out if you want a lot of options. For example angular or react frontend, SQL or nosql, monolith or microservices. Warning: it relies heavily on spring framework. So that may be an entry barrier too.
  • indecisive_user 7y ago
    I believe jhipster works with kotlin as well.
• Ididntdothis 7y ago
  To me it's still surprising that nobody has done something like MS Access or VB6 for the web. They were easy to learn but had enough power to create really complex solutions. The only downside were scaling and multiple user support. These problems shouldn't be that hard to solve.
  • zubairq 7y ago
    We are building something like that at yazz.com, but still early days
  • eugeniox 7y ago
    DaDaBIK (https://dadabik.com/ https://dadabik.com/) is available since 2001 and I have heard people referring to it as "MS access for the Web".
  • mattmagoo 7y ago
    You should take a look at Retool. You still need to configure the databases separately in SQL, but the user interface builder is pretty intuitive.
  • kls 7y ago
    I love access, and pushed it at many jobs that I have been at. Many times you have small teams who just are not worth the investment of enterprise systems while they are still growing that part of the business. Access allowed them to solution their needs while the requirements are still in flux. Once a department becomes big enough the access solution serves as a working prototype to generate requirements to build a proper system. It is a shame that Access has fallen out of favor and there really are no web tools that compare to how well it enabled users.
    • sverhagen 7y ago
      Except that for most of us there's probably an eternity between "big enough ... to build a proper system" and actually building one.
    • chihuahua 7y ago
• eugeniox 7y ago
  DaDaBIK (https://dadabik.com https://dadabik.com) is a no-code low-code platform that can generate a Web CRUD app in minutes starting from your existing DB (but you can also design the DB in DaDaBIK itself). It has been around since 2001, CRUD generation has been its main aim since the beginning, with the last versions you can also generate very complex applications injecting some custom code (php, javascript) to implement your business logic. Disclaimer: I am the founder.
• ollerac 7y ago
  Remake - a server-rendered framework for building CRUD web apps [0] This is an open-source framework I've been working on for the past year to try and solve this problem. I was tired of building the same back-end over and over again and wanted to be able to define my data all in one place. It works kind of like Vapid[1], in that it allows you to define back-end logic with front-end syntax. But it goes a step further and has more built-in web app capabilities like support for each user owning their own application, nested elements and pages, sorting elements, and inline edit areas. I just posted a Show HN[2] in another thread. I love for you to read more about it there. You can also see some code examples and a simple demo application here: https://docs.remaketheweb.com/ https://docs.remaketheweb.com/ Reach out to me with any questions. I'm always available to talk: david@remaketheweb.com [0] https://remaketheweb.com/ https://remaketheweb.com/ [1] https://www.vapid.com/ https://www.vapid.com/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22092480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22092480
  • gavinray 7y ago
    Interesting idea, I checked out the site. One piece of feedback, I had to go into the docs, under (A Simple Example App) to get a sense for what it was/how exactly it worked. In place of the video that is the first piece of media content on the landing page, I would have much preferred some snippet of code and a visualization of its result. That way as soon as I come to the site, I get a feel for what exactly it is. I think this would markedly improve your ability to communicate what Remake is. As the old adage goes: 'Show, don't tell.'
    • ollerac 7y ago
      This is my #1 priority. I've gotten this feedback from 4 different people now. Thank you!
    • mritchie712 7y ago
      either this or a 90 second demo of building something (e.g. how you made the cards in the demo app)
      • 7y ago
• popup21 7y ago
  Pencil and paper
  • aliswe 7y ago
    Care to elaborate?
• alharith 7y ago
  The tool you are already the most familiar with will most likely be the fastest. Every new tool has a non-zero upfront learning cost.
  • collyw 7y ago
    Counterpoint, I started using SQLite with Python and after less than a day of writing SQL manually I decided just to learn SQLAlchemy. Its cut the amount of code down a lot and the learning time has paid itself back quite quickly.
• jtwaleson 7y ago
  Low-code solutions are great for this. I worked at Mendix in the past, which I still really like. Competitors are outsystems, Google appmaker, Microsoft powerapps and more.
• erikcw 7y ago
  We’ve been using Anvil for internal employee tools for the last year or so with much success. https://anvil.works/ https://anvil.works/
• escape42 7y ago
  Just do an AWS API Gateway to DynamoDB serverless integration, free CRUD, no need to implement the individual operations manually.
  • scarface74 7y ago
    But then you’re stuck with DynamoDB. DDB is only suitable if you have a well defined access pattern. I’m all in on AWS, but I wouldn’t recommend APIGW/DDB as a general purpose solution.
• maltalex 7y ago
  Haven’t tried it myself, but what about postgrest? https://postgrest.org https://postgrest.org
• markhalonen 7y ago
  Postgraphile https://github.com/graphile/postgraphile https://github.com/graphile/postgraphile It's like Hasura but written in a language you can understand. Using it with great success on two projects, both > 3 months into development on.
  • lucas_membrane 7y ago
    If such long projects, I guess the benefit must be a pretty high quality system to earn your praise. Can you describe the benefits?
• zikani_03 7y ago
  Try CakePHP. The `bake` tool allows you to create CRUD functionality quickly. Just create your database and run `bin/cake bake all` and it creates everything from models, controllers, views (templates) and even tests! I have been using it since 1.3.x days and it's just got better over the years - migration between versions was relatively painless. https://cakephp.org https://cakephp.org
• haddr 7y ago
  I wonder if there is something for CRUD as easy as Delphi used to be for rapid prototyping.
• qpiox 7y ago
  OpenXava (https://openxava.org https://openxava.org) is an platform that is open source and automatically generates user interface based on CRUD operations (+ much more). Even for one-to-many or many-to-one associations, it creates look up lists and master-detail user interfaces. It also creates interface for searching, for printing reports, for custom queries, for group-by and similar aggregate queries and much more. All automatically. How? It uses information that you provide which Java class corresponds to which table, Hibernate style JPA ORM annotated classes, either in XML or as plain java classes with annotations (one class per table). If you have a large database, with multitude of tables, you can use the Hibernate / JBoss reverse engineering tool to generate the mapping classes directly from the database structure. See this: https://eugencovaciq.wordpress.com/2016/02/01/hibernate-tools-reverse-engineering-using-maven/ https://eugencovaciq.wordpress.com/2016/02/01/hibernate-tool... There are other tools that could help. Why OpenXava? Because it is very easy to customize the generated user interface and it is very flexible. You just add @view annotations to the classes that modify how the interface is generated. For example, when you need to drop out some attributes, or not show a link to another table, or when the table is used as a lookup for the foreign key in another table, you can configure how the lookup will look like in one situation, and how in another. You can reconfigure the layout of complicated forms for tables with many attributes, also using view annotations. I am not involved with OpenXava, but have used it to make an administration interface for several apps. I have a maven script that can be run from the command line, that uses hibernate reverse engineering library to generate the mapping classes and i have the initial app in minutes.
• gavinray 7y ago
  Hasura and React Admin with Hasura RA data-adapter https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine https://github.com/marmelab/react-admin https://github.com/marmelab/react-admin https://github.com/Steams/ra-data-hasura-graphql https://github.com/Steams/ra-data-hasura-graphql
• theptip 7y ago
  I think the meta-answer is to pick the CRUD framework for the language that you already know well; e.g. if you know Python, use Django. But if you know PHP already, just use Laravel or whatever, rather than learning Python to get access to Django. While there are features in some of these frameworks that will give you a productivity boost in certain use cases, none of them are worth taking the productivity hit of learning a new language.
• PaywallBuster 7y ago
  If you're confortable with Laravel PHP, check out https://backpackforlaravel.com/ https://backpackforlaravel.com/. I've used it for a couple of projects over the last few years. The OSS project has really gone a long way since the earlier days (it was actually called Dick). Seems to be quite popular too: 500.000+ downloads 14.000+ developers use Backpack every month
• jamesfmilne 7y ago
  Try Xojo for a cross-platform modern VB equivalent. They can compile to a webapp now too that presents the UI in a browser. http://www.xojo.com/ http://www.xojo.com/ Disclaimer: I worked on Xojo’s earlier incarnation REALbasic waaaaay back.
• oblib 7y ago
  PouchDB.js. PouchDB is, in my opinion, an overlooked gem that deserves more attention. For small tools you don't even need a backend. It uses your web browser's built-in DB
  • lucas_membrane 7y ago
    What are the limits (per app, per user, per browser install) for amount of data, number of rows, etc in browser built-in DB's nowadays?
    • oblib 7y ago
      I really don't know the answers to that, but I did do a bit of testing on my old Mac Mini (late 2009, 8GB ram). I wrote a script that created 1000 documents that were pretty small just a few k at most. The app I wrote using pouchdb to use find and edit them started choking when Safari had about 5000 documents stored in it. If you install CouchDB on your local box, or a remote server, and configure PouchDB to use your CouchDB to store and access those docs you can probably have 10s of 1000s and I know you can scale that up to millions of documents with the right hardware. You can get industrial strength remote CouchDBs from IBM and CouchBase for a pretty reasonable fee too. And you can run PouchDB with Node,js on a server and store your docs on it. So there are a lot of ways to use it.
• pier25 7y ago
  On the server check Hasura. You get a GraphQL CRUD over Postgres in almost one click.
• omani 7y ago
  https://postgrest.org/ https://postgrest.org/
• kohtatsu 7y ago
  This meta-tool was posted 2 days ago, JSON w/ queries -> admin pages. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22073037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22073037
• m_abdelfattah 7y ago
  Ruby on Rails' Active Admin is my favorite https://activeadmin.info https://activeadmin.info
• pablobico 7y ago
  We just released our visual code-generator: https://www.generato.com/ https://www.generato.com/ or https://app.generato.com/ https://app.generato.com/ We have built a technological graph to set up your applications in seconds instead of hours, days or even months. You could than apply text-based templates (with placeholders) and generate (and update) out of the browser or our desktop-applications. Individual added code stays where it is! Currently we support CRUD, Authentication for Java, PostgreSQL and Angular for free, but we are expanding our template-stack and even you as our user are free to integrate your own technology. We are in a free beta-stage now, so give it a try!
• vlasky 7y ago
  Grocery CRUD is a CodeIgniter/PHP library that lets you quickly create a CRUD with views. Officially it only supports MySQL but some third-party patches let you use it with other databases. https://www.grocerycrud.com/ https://www.grocerycrud.com/
• mister_hn 7y ago
  API-Platform is a OpenAPI-based project that helps you focus on the business logic of your project, because the CRUD will be easily generated: https://api-platform.com/ https://api-platform.com/
• camkego 7y ago
  You shouldn't overlook Orbeon Forms, it has history going back to 2007 (it seems quite mature). I believe it can just be used like a robust black box to do both CRUD and HTTP web front ends.
  • avernet 7y ago
    Yes, Form Builder, in Orbeon Forms, allows you to create a page with form fields, use the provided values to call a REST/CRUD API, and show the result on that page. You can try that out for yourself on demo.orbeon.com, or download the software and run it locally. There is an open source (LGPL) Community Edition, but the services & actions feature you need for this is only available in the Professional Edition. This being said, if you just need this for your own local testing, you can get a trial license (automatic process, valid 3 months, no limit on number of licenses you get), and have fun with it. Bias: I'm one of the Orbeon Forms developers ;). ‑Alex
• collyw 7y ago
  If its for internal use then Django's admin interface is pretty good. It's limited in some aspects (you will need to login to use it) so better suited to internal use than public facing websites, but for many tasks it's amazing.
• la_fayette 7y ago
  If you are looking for something proven I would use django. It is easy to add new models and generate crud-UIs with django-admin. Django has many useful modules for extension.
  • collyw 7y ago
    Django's migrations are a nice way to take care of database changes. The NoSQL crowd should try this out before ranting about the benefits of "schemaless".
• jonotime 7y ago
  There is always swagger codegen, which I have not used in a while. I believe you just give it your json swagger spec and it can generate server stubs of about 20 or so different languages/frameworks.
• altmind 7y ago
  rails and activeadmin. define models, include a gem and you got basic crud admin interface.