21 ms·

Hoodie – Fast web app development

294 points by madhukarah 12y ago

cmelbye 12y ago
Broken back button, bleh.
- josefresco 12y ago
  And you thought you were just scrolling... turns out you were navigating.
  - tvon 12y ago
    That is obnoxious as hell.
  - dmnd 12y ago
    I kind of like having the page state in the URL like that - makes sending someone a link easier. See also: Discourse. They should fix it by not pushing those minor state changes to history, though. Probably an easy fix.
  - drcode 12y ago
    I wish we could stop calling things "broken" just because they work in a way that's well thought out but unconventional. How are we ever going to make progress on UI design if everyone immediately gets chastised for deviating from more orthodox web behavior by even the slightest amount? EDIT: lbarrow is correct that the hash tag navigation is borked. I thought people were just complaining about navigation to a previous site on the same tab. I stand corrected, I fully agree it's broken.
    - lbarrow 12y ago
      This is clearly broken. You can't go back beyond the first part of the page you looked at. It doesn't work.
      - drcode 12y ago
        OK, I stand corrected, after further testing I agree the inter-page navigation doesn't work right.
timrpeterson 12y ago
nice looking, thanks for sharing
fit2rule 12y ago
Very nice tool, quite convenient .. having just picked up a MeteorJS requirement for a project, this looks like a nice distraction. ;)
- gr2m 12y ago
  please ping us if you have any questions! twitter.com/hoodiehq
nailer 12y ago
Interestingly enough this is a very similar business model to GetAngular, where AngularJS originated, a few years ago. http://web.archive.org/web/20100413141437/http://getangular.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100413141437/http://getangular.... More details: http://www.niden.net/2009/12/world-with-part-1-reviewhow-to.html http://www.niden.net/2009/12/world-with-part-1-reviewhow-to....
preek 12y ago
I know @gr2m, one of the guys behind Hoodie - he's one of the most awesome and holistic engineers I have met in my professional career! Also he's a regular speaker at conferences and devoting his time for charitable work. If you don't have a backend ninja in your dev team, you should take a serious look into Hoodie!
- da02 12y ago
  Would you happen to know if there are any videos of his talks online?
  - janl 12y ago
    See http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/talks-about-hoodie-offlinefirst-nobackend-dreamcode-hoodie-related-topics/ http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/talks-about-hoodie-offlinefirst-... for a few pointers :)
  - preek 12y ago
    There are probably videos. However, I do not have links. But he was one of the speakers at re:publica[1] two weeks ago in Berlin as well as one of the moderators of the Global Innovation Lounge that was streamed by voicerepublic[2]. 1. http://re-publica.de/user/2037/event/1 http://re-publica.de/user/2037/event/1 2. https://voicerepublic.com/venues/196#archived-talks https://voicerepublic.com/venues/196#archived-talks
janl 12y ago
Team Hoodie here. Happy to answer any questions you might have :)
- jjr2527 12y ago
  Is it just me or are there some dependency management issues? Missing boom, shot, now lru-cache...down the rabbit hole.
  - gr2m 12y ago
    Not that we are aware of. Could you please open an issue at https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie-server/issues/new https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie-server/issues/new, and post your error messages? We're happy to help
- janl 12y ago
  Hoodie is supported by a bootstrapped company run by the core devs, who put the profits back into Hoodie: http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/welcome-to-the-neighbourhoodie/ http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/welcome-to-the-neighbourhoodie/ Hoodie also relies on sponsorships, donations, gittip and other sources of revenue: http://blog.hood.ie/2014/01/how-is-hoodie-funded/ http://blog.hood.ie/2014/01/how-is-hoodie-funded/ And here are a ton of more talks, slide decks, podcast links to Hoodie and closely related topics Offline First and noBackend: http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/talks-about-hoodie-offlinefirst-nobackend-dreamcode-hoodie-related-topics/ http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/talks-about-hoodie-offlinefirst-...
- Brakenshire 12y ago
  Apologies for asking such a horrible question, but is there a rough timeline for it being production ready? It looks very interesting.
  - ffffux 12y ago
    no worries, and thanks! Actually, there is already at least one app in production running on it for a few months now plus a few MVPs, so if you want to go for it: do it. We're currently working towards the release of 1.0. (Disclaimer: Team Hoodie again :) )
egeozcan 12y ago
If you wonder how the synchronization works, it's currently using a custom solution which is built on top of local storage. However it seems[0] that they are planing to switch to the awesome Pouchdb[1]. [0]: https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie.js/issues/8 https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie.js/issues/8 [1]: http://pouchdb.com/ http://pouchdb.com/
- janl 12y ago
  That is correct :)
- skybrian 12y ago
  I looked at pouchdb's website and there's a lot about browser support but I didn't see any docs about the data model. It seems you're expected to know how CouchDB works?
  - janl 12y ago
    Yeah, it’s a document database, uses UUIDs and revisions for identification and does HTTP-based P2P replication. In Hoodie we abstract that away in a simple to use `hoodie.store` object with the usual `add()`, `update(), `find()`, `findAll()` methods for operations. No need to know about the CouchDB/PouchDB specifics, just store your objects :)
    - skybrian 12y ago
      Okay, but the key design decision in any data syncing library is how it resolves update conflicts. Is it last-one-wins, report an error and try again, diff merging, or maybe some kind of operational transform? Since that's the heart of the problem being solved, it's weird when the docs leave it out.
      - janl 12y ago
        Excellent point. We will make this more clear. Conflicts are detected for you, like in version control systems. You need to resolve them yourself, or you can implement a server-wins/client-wins/last-write-wins scenario, if you want to.
sergiotapia 12y ago
>It took less than 15 minutes for a person with no experience in any part of the stack to take an existing single user app and make it a multi-user application with robust security and data storage. […] Bravo, hood.ie, brav-fucking-o. I find that extremely hard to believe.
- janl 12y ago
  Yeah, same here, but it’s a testimonial we received :) Given that Hoodie’s whole focus is on hiding backend complexities, it is not too far fetched, though.
- themodelplumber 12y ago
  >brav-fucking-o I would have left that part out. Partly because it doesn't really roll off the tongue well, and partly because it comes across as hubris.
  - quarterto 12y ago
    http://www.xkcd.com/1290/ http://www.xkcd.com/1290/
    - 8ig8 12y ago
      Wow, there really is a relevant xkcd for everything.
- EGreg 12y ago
  You should try to head to http://github.com/EGreg/Q http://github.com/EGreg/Q and try it out :) I think you'll find that you can make a multiuser app from a single user app rather straightforwardly in a day. Although 15 mins would be only for a Q expert.
- alien3d 12y ago
  i building code generator with less then a second to create application. But more focus on business logic environment.All be cater such as header and master detail form.But like most generator code,there is overweight of code.Some code need to removed.The code are based on php.Have try to generate java crud form also but not satisfied with java generic issue.If somebody can help port to other language ,could be great.Sorry latest code don't put in the github yet.
tesla_im 12y ago
How different is this from Meteor? (meteor.com)
hmslydia 12y ago
How does this compare/contrast to Meteor?
- nailer 12y ago
  Hoodie provides a backend for you, you manage the browser. Meteor (and Derby etc) is a full stack JS setup, where you manage both the browser and node. Both do data sync.
- ffffux 12y ago
  In addition: Meteor data is public by default, and the architecture is always online, whereas Hoodie data is private by default, and the architecture is offline by default.
- gr2m 12y ago
  Besides the points already mentioned, Meteor is VC backed. Hoodie is an open source project first, that we founded & bootstrapped a company for to sustain its future, and that we will eventually turn into a non-profit. We are and will be not accountable to any investor with questionable interests in an open source project.
billyhoffman 12y ago
So let's just deliver all our business logic as JavaScript to an entirely untrustworthy client! Whats the worst that could happen?
- janl 12y ago
  Hoodie works no different than Gmail. What’s the worst that can happen there?
  - billyhoffman 12y ago
    Well you sure as shit aren't going to see "hoodie.account.signUp(username, password);" in Gmail's client-side code. Gmail's code base is not a "offline first, mobile first" platform. The API that is exposed to the client-side is fairly light (watch the traffic). I highly suggest use research "business logic flaws" in web apps. Anything Jeremiah Grossman has said on this topic is good stuff.
    - janl 12y ago
      They have frontend code that will talk to /singup or whatever the route for creating an account is. Hoodie does nothing different. Thanks for the pointer to Jeremiah, though :)
    - pokstad 12y ago
      Can you give an example for why that signup code is bad? In the case that I'm using Hoodie with CouchDB, wouldn't Hoodie just AJAX post a user document to the CouchDB _users database (which is a good implementation)? All of the access control would be in the hands of the server with minimal (if any at all) security logic in the front end.
    - onezerozeroone 12y ago
      Yeah, but you're going to see a <form> that POSTs to some target URL, with username and password as fields. The only thing protecting the plaintext password from leaking is SSL. POSTing a XmlHttpRequest is equivalent.
    - 12y ago
thomasfromcdnjs 12y ago
Couldn't find the example link? Is there one?
- janl 12y ago
  There are API samples further down the main page on http://hood.ie http://hood.ie https://github.com/zoePage/hoodie-drawing https://github.com/zoePage/hoodie-drawing is an example app.
EGreg 12y ago
You guys should take a look at http://github.com/EGreg/Q http://github.com/EGreg/Q Not released yet -- but if someone has PHP / JS / PhoneGap skillz and wants to work with us, you can be an early member of the community.
- rcsorensen 12y ago
  In case you were unaware, there's a very popular and lovely promises library for javascript named q. https://github.com/kriskowal/q https://github.com/kriskowal/q
  - EGreg 12y ago
    Yes I am aware of it. I also like it a lot. The Q Platform is able to interoperate with that Q library as well as with Angular, etc. There are also several languages named Q. I don't think "Q Platform" is the same thing as a promises framework. It's not even for Javascript only. So why downvote the platform because there is something named similar to it? Another example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_authorization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_authorization https://dev.twitter.com/docs/oauth/xauth https://dev.twitter.com/docs/oauth/xauth https://www.google.com/support/enterprise/static/postini/docs/admin/en/admin_ee_cu/authen_xauth.html https://www.google.com/support/enterprise/static/postini/doc...
josephjrobison 12y ago
Just realized .ie is an excellent TLD for cute website names
- joelennon 12y ago
  It's also notoriously painful to register a .ie domain. You need some connection to Ireland, but even if you do there are restrictions on what you can register (needing to have a company name or registered business name matching the domain, for example). They have loosened up considerably on the discretionary domains, but it still seems to take at least a week to get your registration approved and completed.
- talideon 12y ago
  Less than you might think. It's not a trivial matter to get an .ie domain. The IEDR's rules make things difficult if you can't either (a) demonstrate a connection with Ireland the reviewer will accept or (b) demonstrate that you trade in the Irish market. There are ways around some of their rules, such as getting a registered business name from the CRO, but it really is a pain in the backside. I write this as somebody who works for one of the biggest .ie registrars.
  - justincormack 12y ago
    Isn't creating an Irish company relatively easy (if you are in EU)? I guess its a fair amount of work and cost to get a nice name if you dont want a company...
    - talideon 12y ago
      Comparatively speaking, yes, but they're registered in Germany, so that wouldn't fly. It looks like they used a proxy registrant and some well placed fibs to acquire the domain name, which is one of the more dicey ways to go about it as the IEDR aren't afraid to pull registrations. Much safer and saner is to get a Registered Business Name number from the CRO. It doesn't cost much, you have it practically forever, and it's possible for private citizens and foreign corps to get them.
lazerwalker 12y ago
So this appears to essentially be a Parse-like service that's self-hostable? Interesting.
- gr2m 12y ago
  Exactly. Plus it's self-extandable, too. And expect many hoodie hosting providers popping up in the future, if you don't want that hassle.
twunde 12y ago
I guess this means that the sample web app no longer breaks if it's kept running for 15 minutes? Or is that problem still around?
- janl 12y ago
  Not that we are aware of. Could you please open an issue at https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie-server/issues/new https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie-server/issues/new, and post your error messages? We're happy to help
primitivesuave 12y ago
Giving full email privileges to the client is a terrible idea. Even if you do rate limiting, you're essentially allowing anyone to get your mail server(s) blacklisted and all future mail from anyone marked as spam. In general, most people would be naturally apprehensive about federating their entire user authentication system through a third party. However, I suppose that by using hoodie you are supporting a group of people whose only job is to ensure security and fix vulnerabilities in your login system. It's also open-source, so you can vet it for yourself. The JS library needs more work though - I could think of several basic use cases that it can't handle. It would also be great to see some full examples. Overall this is very cool stuff.
- gr2m 12y ago
  Hoodie doesn't provide any email privileges in it's core. There is an email plugin that does that, but it's just a showcase and we would not recommend to use that in a production app. The plugin is maybe 10 lines of code, you can easily use that as base and put all the security in it that you would do in a REST API as well. I'd be also very interested in your basic use cases that you think Hoodie couldn't handle. It would certainly be great input for the project.
  - mcguire 12y ago
    "There is an email plugin that does that, but it's just a showcase and we would not recommend to use that in a production app." You do realize that by putting it in your documentation, you're encouraging people to use it.
    - janl 12y ago
      We also encourage people not to use Hoodie in production, yet :) What @gr2m means: there is no reason Hoodie’s mail feature would work any different from a traditional web app. At some point a server side will validate a client request, and if valid, translate that into sending an email (Gmail comes to mind). Hoodie’s email plugin can do exactly that, except that today’s implementation is a mere sketch of that, like other parts of Hoodie, that show what can be done, but aren’t hardened against production use, yet. None of that means though that Hoodie behaves any differently from a security/abuse/DOS perspective than any other web app :)
runawaybottle 12y ago
So I'm looking at their "Account" api, and I wonder if something similar like that exists for node just for the backend.
- LazerBear 12y ago
  Not really the same, but Passport offers easy account authentication.
HackinOut 12y ago
As discussed before here on hn (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5514284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5514284), this seems like a great successor (or at least a well-maintained alternative) to CouchApps and Kanso. I will definitively give it a try once PouchDB becomes a dependency :)
smrtinsert 12y ago
Seems like I should've seen this on the latest episode of Silicon Valley.
reconbot 12y ago
Moving from a request based business logic to data based business logic (processing incoming data, as opposed to processing incoming http requests) is an interesting shift. Does anyone know what this kind of system is called? I'd love to do more research.
- janl 12y ago
  Heya @reconbot, I don’t know if this specific system has a name, but it is something akin to a messaging bus, where clients and servers just exchange messages, if they have a network connection. Messages can carry raw data (a user record), or intents (send this email), and both sides agree on what to do with certain types of messages. Hope this helps! :)
- nick_whiu 12y ago
  Event-driven architecture
- ako 12y ago
  client-server architecture?
coherentpony 12y ago
I'm not sure if it's just me, but I think this site hijacks my 'back' button. I'm trying to get a recreate but I'm having some trouble. Will report back shortly.
auvrw 12y ago
looks cool on several levels: empowering people to build the things they want w/o being "1337", volunteer driven, a "noBackend"/"One Backend Per User" (http://www.infoq.com/presentations/private-backend http://www.infoq.com/presentations/private-backend) default for a freer internet, and named after one of the most versatile articles of clothing ever invented. the hoodie-server repo clocks in at just under 3k lines of javascript, though. i mean, there are a bunch of plugins, and wc is far from the best metric, but it's the only one that i've time for while this is still near the top of the list, so i'll just ask: is this whole project to be viewed more as kick-ass-but-still-in-progress codebase or more like a socio-political statement about what happens when you make creating a single user's experience the priority (vs. trying to roll out an app that could scale your user base while still managing to own all their data)? anyway, it seems like some of each.
- janl 12y ago
  You basically nailed it :) — Hoodie is probably further along that it might seem. The team has been working on earlier iterations of this for nearly a decade now, and we have learned a lot along the way, allowing us to be very concise this time around. In addition, we have chosen a few powerful abstractions to make the actual implementation rather tiny. That said, there is lots of work to be done, to make it, say, Rails, or Django-grade production ready, but the rough sketches are there and we are comfortable running a production app since December 2013, and we are working with a bunch of clients on their products, that we are comfortable with putting our reputation on the line for. After 1.0 (we are pre), we want to be very explicit with the different levels of stability and maturity we ascribe to all parts of the system and the whole release overall. Our current production app handles 10k registered users on a small VPS without much sweat, so anywhere in that order of magnitude, with similar usage patterns, we thing Hoodie rocks the real-world, but if you are significantly diverging from this, we want to be careful and only recommend other’s to rely on Hoodie, when we have reasonable first or second hand experience of similar scale and use. As for the socio-political statement: that’s definitely a big part of our motivation. We want to write and spread a story that isn’t the usual idea-vc-flip-sunset / abuse-overworking-cheating horror stories. And freeing data and empowering users is a future we want to see, so we are building it :)
owenwil 12y ago
We're working on a similar no-backend product called Hoist that does most of what Hoodie is but is a hosted solution. We do all the 'server' work so you can just build your app. We provide API's for everything from Data management (just post and get JSON) and user management. We're also working on integrating other cloud company API's so you can quickly get hooked up to them (and do the auth with tokens) on the server side and then use their API's in a fully client-side app. Check it out: http://hoistapps.com http://hoistapps.com Would love to hear what anyone thinks if you give it a go. I can be emailed on ow@hoistapps.com
- janl 12y ago
  Cool! Glad to see more of this on the table :)
- barce 12y ago
  Hood.ie is open source, and your code is not. Any chance you can open source your code?
  - owenwil 12y ago
    Our client library is entirely open source, but our platform itself is not as it's a commercial no-backend offering. This allows us to offer production-grade hosting for these types of no-backend apps.
    - Arkadir 12y ago
      Many companies offer production-grade hosting for open source applications. The fact that you are keeping your source closed tells me that you are afraid a competitor (or your clients themselves) could achieve an equivalent quality of hosting for less than they would pay you. To a customer like me, this is bad news.
      - owenwil 12y ago
        We absolutely think that open sourcing code is important, but not just a giant lump of all of it; a mountain of code not always useful. It's still early days for us but we are considering open sourcing reusable parts of our platform or allowing people to host their own if they wish, but we haven't yet decided on which we will pursue yet.
sneak 12y ago
Getting .ie domains is a pain in the ass. Tons of great domain hacks there but requires a physical presence in Ireland. Good work.
mrfusion 12y ago
Didn't appjet (yc 20xx) try this same idea a few years ago?
- janl 12y ago
  Yeah, it looks like the target audiences squarely overlap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppJet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppJet doesn’t look like it had a focus on offline-first. And Hoodie is not a hosted platform but an Open Source project more akin to Rails. In addition, Hoodie is not interested in VC and flipping to Google later ;)
smegel 12y ago
I suppose it's better than "Bro"...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
alien3d 12y ago
Nice.but the website i see only source code. so kinda confuse how large system can build fast by noob.
hammadfauz 12y ago
I didn't realize there there was a name for it. Nobackend. catchy. I use SharePoint server as a nobackend solution. All the apps I write are client-side JavaScript. User profiles, permissions, and authentication are left to SharePoint to deal with. I create lists, query and update them via web services provided out of the box. Even search is provided by a web service, so I don't have to worry about indexing content. All I have to do is build user-centric clients for dealing with the data. It's brilliant. Hoodie sounds like a great generalization for that, in a public/non-corporate domain. Plus it has events for displaying data changes immediately. What's not to like?
itsbits 12y ago
I see you can add , update data to the db using javascript...is it using nodejs?
- janl 12y ago
  End users only ever see JavaScript in the frontend. Some backend heavy lifting is done in Node and developers can extend that writing plugins in Node as well.
dahjelle 12y ago
I suspect this is in the documentation, but I'll ask here anyways: what does Hoodie do with the browser-cached data when a user signs out? Is it entirely removed from the local machine, or does it persist so the user can login while the machine is still offline? (I suspect there is an attack vector there, though I've not looked into it at all.)
- janl 12y ago
  The default is keeping the data, but app devs can implement a pruning method as well, to make things suitable for shared browsers and such.

294 points by madhukarah 12y ago

cmelbye 12y ago

Broken back button, bleh.

josefresco 12y ago
And you thought you were just scrolling... turns out you were navigating.
- tvon 12y ago
  That is obnoxious as hell.
- dmnd 12y ago
  I kind of like having the page state in the URL like that - makes sending someone a link easier. See also: Discourse. They should fix it by not pushing those minor state changes to history, though. Probably an easy fix.
- drcode 12y ago
  I wish we could stop calling things "broken" just because they work in a way that's well thought out but unconventional. How are we ever going to make progress on UI design if everyone immediately gets chastised for deviating from more orthodox web behavior by even the slightest amount? EDIT: lbarrow is correct that the hash tag navigation is borked. I thought people were just complaining about navigation to a previous site on the same tab. I stand corrected, I fully agree it's broken.
  - lbarrow 12y ago
    This is clearly broken. You can't go back beyond the first part of the page you looked at. It doesn't work.
    - drcode 12y ago
      OK, I stand corrected, after further testing I agree the inter-page navigation doesn't work right.

timrpeterson 12y ago

nice looking, thanks for sharing

fit2rule 12y ago

Very nice tool, quite convenient .. having just picked up a MeteorJS requirement for a project, this looks like a nice distraction. ;)

gr2m 12y ago
please ping us if you have any questions! twitter.com/hoodiehq

nailer 12y ago

Interestingly enough this is a very similar business model to GetAngular, where AngularJS originated, a few years ago. http://web.archive.org/web/20100413141437/http://getangular.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100413141437/http://getangular.... More details: http://www.niden.net/2009/12/world-with-part-1-reviewhow-to.html http://www.niden.net/2009/12/world-with-part-1-reviewhow-to....

preek 12y ago

I know @gr2m, one of the guys behind Hoodie - he's one of the most awesome and holistic engineers I have met in my professional career! Also he's a regular speaker at conferences and devoting his time for charitable work. If you don't have a backend ninja in your dev team, you should take a serious look into Hoodie!

da02 12y ago
Would you happen to know if there are any videos of his talks online?
- janl 12y ago
  See http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/talks-about-hoodie-offlinefirst-nobackend-dreamcode-hoodie-related-topics/ http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/talks-about-hoodie-offlinefirst-... for a few pointers :)
- preek 12y ago
  There are probably videos. However, I do not have links. But he was one of the speakers at re:publica[1] two weeks ago in Berlin as well as one of the moderators of the Global Innovation Lounge that was streamed by voicerepublic[2]. 1. http://re-publica.de/user/2037/event/1 http://re-publica.de/user/2037/event/1 2. https://voicerepublic.com/venues/196#archived-talks https://voicerepublic.com/venues/196#archived-talks

janl 12y ago

Team Hoodie here. Happy to answer any questions you might have :)

jjr2527 12y ago
Is it just me or are there some dependency management issues? Missing boom, shot, now lru-cache...down the rabbit hole.
- gr2m 12y ago
  Not that we are aware of. Could you please open an issue at https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie-server/issues/new https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie-server/issues/new, and post your error messages? We're happy to help
janl 12y ago
Hoodie is supported by a bootstrapped company run by the core devs, who put the profits back into Hoodie: http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/welcome-to-the-neighbourhoodie/ http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/welcome-to-the-neighbourhoodie/ Hoodie also relies on sponsorships, donations, gittip and other sources of revenue: http://blog.hood.ie/2014/01/how-is-hoodie-funded/ http://blog.hood.ie/2014/01/how-is-hoodie-funded/ And here are a ton of more talks, slide decks, podcast links to Hoodie and closely related topics Offline First and noBackend: http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/talks-about-hoodie-offlinefirst-nobackend-dreamcode-hoodie-related-topics/ http://blog.hood.ie/2014/05/talks-about-hoodie-offlinefirst-...
Brakenshire 12y ago
Apologies for asking such a horrible question, but is there a rough timeline for it being production ready? It looks very interesting.
- ffffux 12y ago
  no worries, and thanks! Actually, there is already at least one app in production running on it for a few months now plus a few MVPs, so if you want to go for it: do it. We're currently working towards the release of 1.0. (Disclaimer: Team Hoodie again :) )

egeozcan 12y ago

If you wonder how the synchronization works, it's currently using a custom solution which is built on top of local storage. However it seems[0] that they are planing to switch to the awesome Pouchdb[1]. [0]: https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie.js/issues/8 https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie.js/issues/8 [1]: http://pouchdb.com/ http://pouchdb.com/

janl 12y ago
That is correct :)
skybrian 12y ago
I looked at pouchdb's website and there's a lot about browser support but I didn't see any docs about the data model. It seems you're expected to know how CouchDB works?
- janl 12y ago
  Yeah, it’s a document database, uses UUIDs and revisions for identification and does HTTP-based P2P replication. In Hoodie we abstract that away in a simple to use `hoodie.store` object with the usual `add()`, `update(), `find()`, `findAll()` methods for operations. No need to know about the CouchDB/PouchDB specifics, just store your objects :)
  - skybrian 12y ago
    Okay, but the key design decision in any data syncing library is how it resolves update conflicts. Is it last-one-wins, report an error and try again, diff merging, or maybe some kind of operational transform? Since that's the heart of the problem being solved, it's weird when the docs leave it out.
    - janl 12y ago
      Excellent point. We will make this more clear. Conflicts are detected for you, like in version control systems. You need to resolve them yourself, or you can implement a server-wins/client-wins/last-write-wins scenario, if you want to.

sergiotapia 12y ago

>It took less than 15 minutes for a person with no experience in any part of the stack to take an existing single user app and make it a multi-user application with robust security and data storage. […] Bravo, hood.ie, brav-fucking-o. I find that extremely hard to believe.

janl 12y ago
Yeah, same here, but it’s a testimonial we received :) Given that Hoodie’s whole focus is on hiding backend complexities, it is not too far fetched, though.
themodelplumber 12y ago
>brav-fucking-o I would have left that part out. Partly because it doesn't really roll off the tongue well, and partly because it comes across as hubris.
- quarterto 12y ago
  http://www.xkcd.com/1290/ http://www.xkcd.com/1290/
  - 8ig8 12y ago
    Wow, there really is a relevant xkcd for everything.
EGreg 12y ago
You should try to head to http://github.com/EGreg/Q http://github.com/EGreg/Q and try it out :) I think you'll find that you can make a multiuser app from a single user app rather straightforwardly in a day. Although 15 mins would be only for a Q expert.
alien3d 12y ago
i building code generator with less then a second to create application. But more focus on business logic environment.All be cater such as header and master detail form.But like most generator code,there is overweight of code.Some code need to removed.The code are based on php.Have try to generate java crud form also but not satisfied with java generic issue.If somebody can help port to other language ,could be great.Sorry latest code don't put in the github yet.

tesla_im 12y ago

How different is this from Meteor? (meteor.com)

hmslydia 12y ago

How does this compare/contrast to Meteor?

nailer 12y ago
Hoodie provides a backend for you, you manage the browser. Meteor (and Derby etc) is a full stack JS setup, where you manage both the browser and node. Both do data sync.
ffffux 12y ago
In addition: Meteor data is public by default, and the architecture is always online, whereas Hoodie data is private by default, and the architecture is offline by default.
gr2m 12y ago
Besides the points already mentioned, Meteor is VC backed. Hoodie is an open source project first, that we founded & bootstrapped a company for to sustain its future, and that we will eventually turn into a non-profit. We are and will be not accountable to any investor with questionable interests in an open source project.

billyhoffman 12y ago

So let's just deliver all our business logic as JavaScript to an entirely untrustworthy client! Whats the worst that could happen?

janl 12y ago
Hoodie works no different than Gmail. What’s the worst that can happen there?
- billyhoffman 12y ago
  Well you sure as shit aren't going to see "hoodie.account.signUp(username, password);" in Gmail's client-side code. Gmail's code base is not a "offline first, mobile first" platform. The API that is exposed to the client-side is fairly light (watch the traffic). I highly suggest use research "business logic flaws" in web apps. Anything Jeremiah Grossman has said on this topic is good stuff.
  - janl 12y ago
    They have frontend code that will talk to /singup or whatever the route for creating an account is. Hoodie does nothing different. Thanks for the pointer to Jeremiah, though :)
  - pokstad 12y ago
    Can you give an example for why that signup code is bad? In the case that I'm using Hoodie with CouchDB, wouldn't Hoodie just AJAX post a user document to the CouchDB _users database (which is a good implementation)? All of the access control would be in the hands of the server with minimal (if any at all) security logic in the front end.
  - onezerozeroone 12y ago
    Yeah, but you're going to see a <form> that POSTs to some target URL, with username and password as fields. The only thing protecting the plaintext password from leaking is SSL. POSTing a XmlHttpRequest is equivalent.
  - 12y ago

thomasfromcdnjs 12y ago

Couldn't find the example link? Is there one?

janl 12y ago
There are API samples further down the main page on http://hood.ie http://hood.ie https://github.com/zoePage/hoodie-drawing https://github.com/zoePage/hoodie-drawing is an example app.

EGreg 12y ago

You guys should take a look at http://github.com/EGreg/Q http://github.com/EGreg/Q Not released yet -- but if someone has PHP / JS / PhoneGap skillz and wants to work with us, you can be an early member of the community.

rcsorensen 12y ago
In case you were unaware, there's a very popular and lovely promises library for javascript named q. https://github.com/kriskowal/q https://github.com/kriskowal/q
- EGreg 12y ago
  Yes I am aware of it. I also like it a lot. The Q Platform is able to interoperate with that Q library as well as with Angular, etc. There are also several languages named Q. I don't think "Q Platform" is the same thing as a promises framework. It's not even for Javascript only. So why downvote the platform because there is something named similar to it? Another example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_authorization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_authorization https://dev.twitter.com/docs/oauth/xauth https://dev.twitter.com/docs/oauth/xauth https://www.google.com/support/enterprise/static/postini/docs/admin/en/admin_ee_cu/authen_xauth.html https://www.google.com/support/enterprise/static/postini/doc...

josephjrobison 12y ago

Just realized .ie is an excellent TLD for cute website names

joelennon 12y ago
It's also notoriously painful to register a .ie domain. You need some connection to Ireland, but even if you do there are restrictions on what you can register (needing to have a company name or registered business name matching the domain, for example). They have loosened up considerably on the discretionary domains, but it still seems to take at least a week to get your registration approved and completed.
talideon 12y ago
Less than you might think. It's not a trivial matter to get an .ie domain. The IEDR's rules make things difficult if you can't either (a) demonstrate a connection with Ireland the reviewer will accept or (b) demonstrate that you trade in the Irish market. There are ways around some of their rules, such as getting a registered business name from the CRO, but it really is a pain in the backside. I write this as somebody who works for one of the biggest .ie registrars.
- justincormack 12y ago
  Isn't creating an Irish company relatively easy (if you are in EU)? I guess its a fair amount of work and cost to get a nice name if you dont want a company...
  - talideon 12y ago
    Comparatively speaking, yes, but they're registered in Germany, so that wouldn't fly. It looks like they used a proxy registrant and some well placed fibs to acquire the domain name, which is one of the more dicey ways to go about it as the IEDR aren't afraid to pull registrations. Much safer and saner is to get a Registered Business Name number from the CRO. It doesn't cost much, you have it practically forever, and it's possible for private citizens and foreign corps to get them.

lazerwalker 12y ago

So this appears to essentially be a Parse-like service that's self-hostable? Interesting.

gr2m 12y ago
Exactly. Plus it's self-extandable, too. And expect many hoodie hosting providers popping up in the future, if you don't want that hassle.

twunde 12y ago

I guess this means that the sample web app no longer breaks if it's kept running for 15 minutes? Or is that problem still around?

janl 12y ago
Not that we are aware of. Could you please open an issue at https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie-server/issues/new https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie-server/issues/new, and post your error messages? We're happy to help

primitivesuave 12y ago

Giving full email privileges to the client is a terrible idea. Even if you do rate limiting, you're essentially allowing anyone to get your mail server(s) blacklisted and all future mail from anyone marked as spam. In general, most people would be naturally apprehensive about federating their entire user authentication system through a third party. However, I suppose that by using hoodie you are supporting a group of people whose only job is to ensure security and fix vulnerabilities in your login system. It's also open-source, so you can vet it for yourself. The JS library needs more work though - I could think of several basic use cases that it can't handle. It would also be great to see some full examples. Overall this is very cool stuff.

gr2m 12y ago
Hoodie doesn't provide any email privileges in it's core. There is an email plugin that does that, but it's just a showcase and we would not recommend to use that in a production app. The plugin is maybe 10 lines of code, you can easily use that as base and put all the security in it that you would do in a REST API as well. I'd be also very interested in your basic use cases that you think Hoodie couldn't handle. It would certainly be great input for the project.
- mcguire 12y ago
  "There is an email plugin that does that, but it's just a showcase and we would not recommend to use that in a production app." You do realize that by putting it in your documentation, you're encouraging people to use it.
  - janl 12y ago
    We also encourage people not to use Hoodie in production, yet :) What @gr2m means: there is no reason Hoodie’s mail feature would work any different from a traditional web app. At some point a server side will validate a client request, and if valid, translate that into sending an email (Gmail comes to mind). Hoodie’s email plugin can do exactly that, except that today’s implementation is a mere sketch of that, like other parts of Hoodie, that show what can be done, but aren’t hardened against production use, yet. None of that means though that Hoodie behaves any differently from a security/abuse/DOS perspective than any other web app :)

runawaybottle 12y ago

So I'm looking at their "Account" api, and I wonder if something similar like that exists for node just for the backend.

LazerBear 12y ago
Not really the same, but Passport offers easy account authentication.

HackinOut 12y ago

As discussed before here on hn (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5514284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5514284), this seems like a great successor (or at least a well-maintained alternative) to CouchApps and Kanso. I will definitively give it a try once PouchDB becomes a dependency :)

smrtinsert 12y ago

Seems like I should've seen this on the latest episode of Silicon Valley.

reconbot 12y ago

Moving from a request based business logic to data based business logic (processing incoming data, as opposed to processing incoming http requests) is an interesting shift. Does anyone know what this kind of system is called? I'd love to do more research.

janl 12y ago
Heya @reconbot, I don’t know if this specific system has a name, but it is something akin to a messaging bus, where clients and servers just exchange messages, if they have a network connection. Messages can carry raw data (a user record), or intents (send this email), and both sides agree on what to do with certain types of messages. Hope this helps! :)
nick_whiu 12y ago
Event-driven architecture
ako 12y ago
client-server architecture?

coherentpony 12y ago

I'm not sure if it's just me, but I think this site hijacks my 'back' button. I'm trying to get a recreate but I'm having some trouble. Will report back shortly.

auvrw 12y ago

looks cool on several levels: empowering people to build the things they want w/o being "1337", volunteer driven, a "noBackend"/"One Backend Per User" (http://www.infoq.com/presentations/private-backend http://www.infoq.com/presentations/private-backend) default for a freer internet, and named after one of the most versatile articles of clothing ever invented. the hoodie-server repo clocks in at just under 3k lines of javascript, though. i mean, there are a bunch of plugins, and wc is far from the best metric, but it's the only one that i've time for while this is still near the top of the list, so i'll just ask: is this whole project to be viewed more as kick-ass-but-still-in-progress codebase or more like a socio-political statement about what happens when you make creating a single user's experience the priority (vs. trying to roll out an app that could scale your user base while still managing to own all their data)? anyway, it seems like some of each.

janl 12y ago
You basically nailed it :) — Hoodie is probably further along that it might seem. The team has been working on earlier iterations of this for nearly a decade now, and we have learned a lot along the way, allowing us to be very concise this time around. In addition, we have chosen a few powerful abstractions to make the actual implementation rather tiny. That said, there is lots of work to be done, to make it, say, Rails, or Django-grade production ready, but the rough sketches are there and we are comfortable running a production app since December 2013, and we are working with a bunch of clients on their products, that we are comfortable with putting our reputation on the line for. After 1.0 (we are pre), we want to be very explicit with the different levels of stability and maturity we ascribe to all parts of the system and the whole release overall. Our current production app handles 10k registered users on a small VPS without much sweat, so anywhere in that order of magnitude, with similar usage patterns, we thing Hoodie rocks the real-world, but if you are significantly diverging from this, we want to be careful and only recommend other’s to rely on Hoodie, when we have reasonable first or second hand experience of similar scale and use. As for the socio-political statement: that’s definitely a big part of our motivation. We want to write and spread a story that isn’t the usual idea-vc-flip-sunset / abuse-overworking-cheating horror stories. And freeing data and empowering users is a future we want to see, so we are building it :)

owenwil 12y ago

We're working on a similar no-backend product called Hoist that does most of what Hoodie is but is a hosted solution. We do all the 'server' work so you can just build your app. We provide API's for everything from Data management (just post and get JSON) and user management. We're also working on integrating other cloud company API's so you can quickly get hooked up to them (and do the auth with tokens) on the server side and then use their API's in a fully client-side app. Check it out: http://hoistapps.com http://hoistapps.com Would love to hear what anyone thinks if you give it a go. I can be emailed on ow@hoistapps.com

janl 12y ago
Cool! Glad to see more of this on the table :)
barce 12y ago
Hood.ie is open source, and your code is not. Any chance you can open source your code?
- owenwil 12y ago
  Our client library is entirely open source, but our platform itself is not as it's a commercial no-backend offering. This allows us to offer production-grade hosting for these types of no-backend apps.
  - Arkadir 12y ago
    Many companies offer production-grade hosting for open source applications. The fact that you are keeping your source closed tells me that you are afraid a competitor (or your clients themselves) could achieve an equivalent quality of hosting for less than they would pay you. To a customer like me, this is bad news.
    - owenwil 12y ago
      We absolutely think that open sourcing code is important, but not just a giant lump of all of it; a mountain of code not always useful. It's still early days for us but we are considering open sourcing reusable parts of our platform or allowing people to host their own if they wish, but we haven't yet decided on which we will pursue yet.

sneak 12y ago

Getting .ie domains is a pain in the ass. Tons of great domain hacks there but requires a physical presence in Ireland. Good work.

mrfusion 12y ago

Didn't appjet (yc 20xx) try this same idea a few years ago?

janl 12y ago
Yeah, it looks like the target audiences squarely overlap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppJet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppJet doesn’t look like it had a focus on offline-first. And Hoodie is not a hosted platform but an Open Source project more akin to Rails. In addition, Hoodie is not interested in VC and flipping to Google later ;)

smegel 12y ago

I suppose it's better than "Bro"...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

alien3d 12y ago

Nice.but the website i see only source code. so kinda confuse how large system can build fast by noob.

hammadfauz 12y ago

I didn't realize there there was a name for it. Nobackend. catchy. I use SharePoint server as a nobackend solution. All the apps I write are client-side JavaScript. User profiles, permissions, and authentication are left to SharePoint to deal with. I create lists, query and update them via web services provided out of the box. Even search is provided by a web service, so I don't have to worry about indexing content. All I have to do is build user-centric clients for dealing with the data. It's brilliant. Hoodie sounds like a great generalization for that, in a public/non-corporate domain. Plus it has events for displaying data changes immediately. What's not to like?

itsbits 12y ago

I see you can add , update data to the db using javascript...is it using nodejs?

janl 12y ago
End users only ever see JavaScript in the frontend. Some backend heavy lifting is done in Node and developers can extend that writing plugins in Node as well.

dahjelle 12y ago

I suspect this is in the documentation, but I'll ask here anyways: what does Hoodie do with the browser-cached data when a user signs out? Is it entirely removed from the local machine, or does it persist so the user can login while the machine is still offline? (I suspect there is an attack vector there, though I've not looked into it at all.)

janl 12y ago
The default is keeping the data, but app devs can implement a pruning method as well, to make things suitable for shared browsers and such.