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There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own
- padseeker 4y agoI've been building a form builder with a no code rules engine. Hoping to relaunch in the next couple of months. Have been redesigning the homepage and creating content to explain how it works. Here's a video of a tutorial; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDlKtyYf5Kc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDlKtyYf5Kc
- binarymax 4y agoGreat job! Ignore the haters in the comments - I really liked the car payment calculator example and there’s definitely a market for the “excel developer” crowd. Also, not sure if it’s too late to edit the post, but consider prefixing with a “Show HN:” so that others know it’s your work and that you’re around and gathering feedback.
- padseeker 4y agothanks so much. I totally plan to post SHOW HN for some of these other forms. I love the "excel for developers". I think that's a great tagline. The haters are fine. I'll take constructive criticism, as well as accept negative attention. All press is good press right?
- groffee 4y agoAnd now there's 201!
- consultutah 4y agoAnd it still doesn't do what I need it to... Guess I'll just write my own! :)
- padseeker 4y agohonestly there are plenty of uses cases that are a little beyond the scope of keenforms, this simply expands what is possible with a form builder. If there is something you want or need we'd love to hear about it. Right now it does not have a date picker because the difficult of writing a rules engine that handles date conditions. I hope to change that down the road, this is more than an MVP but I have so much more I hope to do.
- forrestthewoods 4y ago… and that’s not a bad thing! I don’t know what the opposite of “Not Invented Here Syndrome” is. But these days I swear all anyone wants to do is MacGyver together three dozens layers and frameworks and pray the spit holds it together. If you know what you want, and no tools does it, then just roll your own. Inventing Things Here is criminally underrated.
- padseeker 4y agothanks man, I appreciate it.
- tomxor 4y agohttps://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- Lammy 4y ago“Learned helplessness”, comic edition, where the author’s self-insert is still The Smartest Guy In The Room because he knows better than to ever try anything.
- gus_massa 4y ago> None of them can do dynamic HTML. Does it mean custom HTML written by the creator of the form or just a few precanned options?
- padseeker 4y agoI mean custom HTML by the creator. You create a form rule to set the value of an HTML input, and then you can embed the values of inputs in the form into that html. I've used a lot of hidden inputs to determine values like even css classes to change how stuff gets displayed. You can even append to an HTML value so you can use multiple rules to build up HTML content.
- gus_massa 4y agoDo you do some cleaning to avoid interference of the code of the creator and your code?
- padseeker 4y agoIf I understand what you are saying, the rules will parse the HTML and look for variables wrapped in curly brackets and convert it to the value and then render that HTML. The editor allows you to embed an input value without having to manually type it yourself. I should do a screencast how that works.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- loloquwowndueo 4y agohttps://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- swyx 4y agothe fact that I came here to comment this shows that I am part of a hive mind and am incapable of independent thought
- gremlinsinc 4y agoI guess that means you probably hang out on reddit, lol. Sounds like the sort of thing I'd hear there (and I feel when I'm on there myself).
- recuter 4y agoYou are all individuals!
- kylereeve 4y agoI'm not! [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsViQD-3roE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsViQD-3roE
- e_y_ 4y agoAt least it's just a library and not a standard, but yes similar logic applies.
- pyrolistical 4y agohttps://vimeo.com/44235657 https://vimeo.com/44235657 The perfect abstract does not exist and one that can do everything is the one that doesn’t have the abstraction to begin with. I.E. use the underlying API directly
- padseeker 4y agothanks I'll check it out. There will always be something that will be beyond reach for SaaS, a level of customization beyond scope of my app. This just goes a few steps further.
- radiojasper 4y agoI tried out the demo and was dissapointed that for number inputs a regular `<input type="text">` is used. This removes any option to add numbers by using the arrow up keys on a keyboard. Another thing I noticed is that your blog loads very slow, but that might be because this article is rather popular now.
- padseeker 4y agoso there is a good reason for this - I've learned the hard way that you cannot trust the number input, it has some very strange behavior. I could write a blog post just about that issue. I plan to create my own custom number input that has its own increment/decrement buttons. The thing was built with react and the number input has some unanticipated side effects.
- azemetre 4y agoIt may be worth mentioning in a future blog post because you lose a lot of the built in behavior of browser input when you make everything a "text" input. It hurts accessibility and inclusiveness as well by ignoring these common browser behaviors.
- padseeker 4y agoThat's fair, I might have to revisit the number input issue. I totally get your complaint. Experimenting with the number input was a learning experience. I built Keenforms with React, and both React and Angular have some strange behaviors related to number inputs.
- radiojasper 4y agoAs a web designer with a speciality in a11y, it hurts that you deemed this not important enough to find the true cause of your issue with the number input. I hope you can revisit this in a future update!
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- alexray 4y agothis looks so great! congrats on the launch!
- padseeker 4y agothanks I really appreciate that
- AtNightWeCode 4y agoCS is so much about finding the correct abstractions. Any coder will sooner or later build a rule engine or a subset of a programming language. Thankfully, most of that never ends up in production. The reason other options lack this feature is not that no one else thought about it.
- marcosdumay 4y ago> It’s a form builder with a built in No Code Rules Engine. Wait... What? Is that a name that people use in a non-sarcastic way?
- kizer 4y ago"No code"? Yes.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pvg 4y agoPlease don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- marcosdumay 4y agoHum... The point of the entire form-builder is to bring more flexibility by using a more powerful "No Code Rules Engine". Given the logical absurd built on the name of the thing, I really don't think this is a goal that will bring good results. It will not generalize at all. (What is also evidenced by the fact that there are more than 200 of those around, and none solves the very common problem the author has.) And yes, that comes from framing the solution along that phrase.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pvg 4y agoThat's a reasonably formed comment, 'lol ur name' is not, which I'm sure you know.
- marcosdumay 4y agoHonestly, the name alone is obviously and enough of a problem. It wouldn't be if this was just a badly named thing, but it's an honest name. You can always sell "seven red lines, all perpendicular, some in green ink and some in transparent" to somebody, but if you honestly go out trying to create it, you will fail. And just the requirements are enough to know that.
- mthoms 4y agoI could have used this a while back. Will definitely take a closer look.
- padseeker 4y agoIf there is anything I can do to help let me know. There is a learning curve, understanding how the form builder works takes a little time. What were you looking to do that you have problems with?
- misterdata 4y agoI built a "PowerPoint/Excel hybrid" that can make forms like this and some more: https://dialogiconderzoek.nl/diadashboard/platform/diaslide_fahrenheit_en.gif https://dialogiconderzoek.nl/diadashboard/platform/diaslide_...
- padseeker 4y agoI think what you did is awesome. Its a great idea.
- flashgordon 4y agoSo now there are 201 form builders ..... ? All jokes aside (given that I suck as a web-dev and still resort to plain vanilla html/css/js to build front ends for my webapps) what would have been great to see in your post was a list of problems with the 200 form builders - or atleast top N common anti-patterns amongst those and your understanding of how they came be and your philosophy and solution for tackling those. The demos definitely help but I couldnt help but feel this was more of a whackamole?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- padseeker 4y agoThat's a fair comment. I'll try to do that for a future blog post. I could probably write a detailed article for each particular feature. That would take some time. Thanks for the feedback and comment.
- flashgordon 4y agoNo worries - to be fair to you - You did try to call out some at a very high level in the intro. I am a visual person so a demo of the anti pattern would have been great (for me). By the I know this does not help your actual work so feel free to ignore this. Your demos look great btw and you should prioritize getting paying customers over random "haters" on the net :)
- mbrodersen 4y agoThis is a great example of why I usually build my own tools. It is easy/fast to do because I only need to implement exactly what I need and nothing more. And bugs can be fixed right away, and features added, without having to wait for a company or open source developer to maybe eventually at some point perhaps fix the bug or add the feature. I have written tools for companies I worked for that has saved hundreds of thousands of development hours for myself and other developers.