Ask HN: Is there any open source tool for creating simple CRUD Apps?

114 points by aswinmohanme ↗ HN
Is there any tools that can make making CRUD apps easier ?

It should allow creating forms for data input and updates and it should be preferably open-source.

I am thinking more like metabase for creating dashboards, does any such tool exists ?

I am using Rails currently

54 comments

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Hi, yes, this is what Retool is for! (https://retool.com)

It's like Metabase, but instead of for buliding dashboards, it's for building CRUD apps. LMK if you have any feedback? We've been working on it for a bit now.

Thanks!

This seems like a cool product, something that we could use.

However our main ERP system doesn't have an API, so I've been building a custom scraper that feeds into a Django app, which allows custom tooling around our data.

This would have been perfect if it allowed for building scrapers to feed the custom db.

As much as I like retool, it's not open source.
Ok it’s not open source, but retool is awesome, I agree
I’ve been using JHipster for a month now and it’s really allowed me to get my side projects off the ground in no time. The CI-CD generator was a huge help too.
I'd be curious to know your use cases. I once used it to rewrite a mainframe application.
I've seen people mention react admin on here, but I haven't gotten round to trying it out myself.
Wow epic comment.

Serious question though, why post hog & metabase? Dont they overlap?

Not my comment, just one I found exceptionally useful for the Hasura piece.
Sort of. They're capable of analytics, but Metabase is a Business Intelligence tool, and Posthog is focused on user interaction/website analytics.

They both give you incredibly useful data, but different kinds. Metabase lets you analyze trends/relationships in your overall database-layer data. Posthog lets you analyze how users are interacting with your website/app and where your traffic is coming from.

It's like Tableau vs Mixpanel/Amplitude.

As far as I can tell, prisma has turned into just an open source typescript query builder (probably the best in it's class though). Prisma used to be graph.cool which was very similar to Hasura.
Try https://github.com/anvil-works/anvil-runtime

No JavaScript nonsense all python code

I would say that in the world of Web applications Python is the nonsense :)
Mind explaining why you believe so?
Well, not a belief more like a practicaly oriented mindset :)

In any modern web application you most probably will end up using Javascript for the frontend part, and you have plenty of choice for the backend, which actually includes some really good options both in Javascript and Typescript.

So choosing Python makes you swtich languages between FE and BE.

Then if we are talking about the BE, Javascript is usually more performant, there is bigger choice of libraries and frameworks, and the tooling is simply better ( and improving).

And then there is the async story. Yes Python has a way to write async code, but is more like a patch on top of fully synchronous language rather than full solution, not to mention the very crippled syntax of Python that doesn't let you write anonymous functions.

Yes all true but if I am familiar with php or python I should be able to create an web application without learning javascript. This was possible few years back so if it is not possible anymore then it is a regression IMHO. anvil.works also makes it possible so it is great for creating my apps.
I’ve used strapi in production apps. Works great, and has a graphql plugin. I’d recommend it!
Flask-Admin[^1] lets you set up CRUD apps easily. You declare your model and it automatically builds up the CRUD views, which you can restrict, with templates you can customize, and views you can override.

[^1]: https://flask-admin.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

(comment deleted)
If you are familiar with Rails, I would strongly recommend investigating Django.

Here's why:

- Django admin gives you all the CRUD you need

- ORM to design your models, simple or complex

- Baked in user auth system

- Secure defaults

- Host of pre-built plugins (Django apps)

- Python 3 is a solid language you will love

- Ability to extend in the future if the need arises

Checkout Daptin https://github.com/daptin/daptin

I have build a lot of crud apps with daptin as the backend. I have been building daptin since about 2 years now.

Daptin will be able to give you much more than just CRUD. Things like authentication/authorization/user management. Maybe you would want OTP based login in future, maybe not. There are a lot of features like that.

It's written in golang so you can get a single independent binary which can run anywhere. There is a docker image as well if you prefer that.

Django's admin is pretty good.
I've been seeking a terminal based CRUD for ages.