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Show HN: SlashApi – a web platform to build REST APIs without code
- replwoacause 5y agoCan I use a custom domain name?
- debarshri 5y agoNice stuff, Quick question around the product. All the services listed already has rest api. Why would I need your product. What is the value add? May be I am missing something. For Rest api for databases - https://postgrest.org https://postgrest.org Too expensive for things that is available for free. Also, what happens when we hit rate limit on the upstream service. Who is responsible for that?
- alfaa 5y agoWe built this initially only to turn the database into API, after ask to users, we found that some people need more than just accessing the database. For example, they want to send notifications to Slack/Telegram when an event happens in the database, or they need to upload a file to the cloud storage, then put the information to their database. That's why we put another service, although they also have an API. Our goal is to make their needs covered in a single platform. Currently, we are working on the "API Workflow" to simplify the process above, so they don't need to write multiple API request in their app. what happens when we hit rate limit on the upstream service? We will just return the response from the upstream service? And user will get rate limit error. We plan to cache the API calls (can be configured by user) to avoid making repetitive API calls to the upstream. Anyway, Thank you. We value and respect your opinion. It means a lot for us to make the project even more valuable to people.
- debarshri 5y agoAPI workflow is a solved problem. Have you looked at zapier? The thing is if you return the response of upstream service, it is jargon for me because I did not use the upstream's service directly. Caching API calls might be a bad idea as it might create inconsistent data. Just saying, it is a hard problem in general. Abstractions are hard problem in general.
- asim 5y agoReminds me of https://nocodeapi.com/ https://nocodeapi.com/
- debarshri 5y agoI think the moat is to create huge amount of integrations. But, I am still missing the point. Why would you not access the rest interface of the services directly and create a security loophole by adding your access tokens to 3rd party service.
- amir734jj 5y agoAgreed. They need a lot of integrations but other than that it's a solid product specially for not tech savvy startups
- debarshri 5y agoCould you elaborate what do you mean by - "it's a solid product specially for not tech savvy startups" If team is writing stuff to use REST, then the team is tech savvy.
- alfaa 5y agoYes it quite similar.
- villgax 5y agoSuggestion, /mon -> /mo or /month or per month Number of API calls per month of 100K for $15 is just too low, you can have decent dedicated servers running per month for $5 & that could very well handle 86400*30 at 1 request per second.
- HatchedLake721 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- mikeyjk 5y agoI don't think this is a fair equivalence... But nonetheless I'm grateful you linked that! That's fascinating to read in hindsight.
- Whiteshadow12 5y agoThis was the first time I really read BrandonM response (very polite). So thanks for posting it.
- loh 5y agoGot any more of these? I love historical comments like this, from HN especially. It is really interesting (and entertaining) to see an idea being dismissed as trivial, knowing that it ends up becoming the core of a multibillion dollar company. I suppose in the case of HN, I could probably use hn.algolia.com to find submissions of startups we now know to be highly successful.
- artembugara 5y agoI know it might sound not so logical for you, but it's not how pricing works.
- villgax 5y agoWasn't questioning the amount, only the units for a plan which could make it more appealing
- kayza 5y agoI honestly don’t get it. Could OP do a quick pitch on this?
- alfaa 5y agoSorry, We didn't make it clear on the website. In short, We build and generate REST APIfor you, so you can focus on building on the frontend side. Thanks, I appreciate your taking the time to write.
- wwn_se 5y agoI don't get it? What would be an example use?
- alfaa 5y agoSorry, We didn't make it clear on the website. In short, We build and generate REST API for you, so you can focus on building on the frontend side. Thanks, I appreciate your taking the time to write.
- TruthWillHurt 5y agoYo dawg, I heard you like APIs, so I put an API in front of an API..
- funerr 5y agoI think this utterly needs a video to explain the product.
- alfaa 5y agoWill do. We didn't make it clear on the website. Thanks, I appreciate your taking the time to write.
- hjgraca 5y agoThere are so many open source alternatives... postgrest, supabase... and so on
- alfaa 5y agoYes, I've seen them, We try to be different, keep improving and adding more features to make the product even more valuable to people. Thanks, I appreciate your taking the time to write.
- bastijn 5y agoUnfortunately I have to register to even get a feeling of what this will do. Also a bit ironic to see curl commands in the first 10 pages I clicked in the documentation whilst the whole product is claiming no code is required.
- alfaa 5y agoSorry, we didn't make it clear on the website. We only build and generate the REST API, so you can only focus on the frontend side. Anyway, Thanks, I appreciate your taking the time to write.
- jawns 5y agoNot to dump on this service in particular, but there are a lot of "No Code / Low Code" platforms out there, and many of them miss the mark on their intended audience. If the intended audience is non-technical users who don't know how to code, then it makes sense to allow them to do things without code. Essentially, you're acting as a declarative interface, where the user tells you what they want done, and they don't have to worry about how you do it at the code level. But if the intended audience is technical, and users do know how to code, then in general what they really want is to write code more efficiently -- that is, write less boilerplate code -- not to have all the code abstracted away. Because they know that abstractions leak. In the case of a service to build REST APIs, where the intended audience is more technical, my guess is that what most devs desire is not to introduce another service layer into their application, but to be able to easily generate all the boilerplate and then easily modify it to fit their use cases.
- alfaa 5y agoWe will think about this for sure. Anyway, Thank you, I appreciate your taking the time to write. We value and respect your opinion.
- tenaciousDaniel 5y agoI find the no-low-code trend really interesting, because it shines a light on the difference in perspective between programmers and non-programmers. It's generally assumed that "code is complex", and therefore that's where the complexity lies in producing software. It's a reasonable assumption if you're looking at it from the outside, but anyone who codes knows that complexity is, well, complex.
- ehutch79 5y agoI've always found the complexity was implementing business requirements. for example if field x is "y" then fields g is required, and field f can only be these three choices. and if field g is filled in, then field x can not be y Stuff like this is where a lot of no-code stuff falls down.
- ogsalmanxx 5y agoThe real question is ... how robust is this with handling perms and custom business logic ... just being able to CRUD is not a starting point anymore. That can be done through scaffolding.
- sajeeb14 5y agoI don't think this is a fair equivalence... But nonetheless I'm grateful you linked that! That's fascinating to read in hindsight.
- sillycube 5y agoWhat is the difference between no code api and your service?
- e12e 5y agoAm I reading this right? There's no security or granular access control? If you connect a resource, like a postgresql db - anyone with access to the front-end client (anyone with the api key; that is everyone) - can read and write to all tables? That's... Not great? https://slashapi.com/docs/pgsql#content-api-endpoints https://slashapi.com/docs/pgsql#content-api-endpoints
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ehutch79 5y agoI looked at the documentation... Does this actually do anything on its own, or is it just a proxy for other services?
- matt-api 5y agoMy 2 cents: add some social login to help user to create their account (e.g. Github or Google)
- SeriousM 5y agoCould we please stop using this "no code required" bullshit? You have to configure it somehow and once you get to the edge of "we guess what our customer needs", which is quite soon, you quickly get to the docs for advanced users where you have to use code in the end again...
- codegeek 5y ago"No Code" is the new Fad word. It sounds a lot cooler than "you still need some config but may not need to write full code". VCs are funding No code like crazy.