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Ask HN: Any low code frameworks on top of Django?

41 points by rlawson ↗ HN
Django is already pretty low code but there's a lot of times I'd just like to write a quick SQL snippet, display a nice grid and then define another couple of SQL snippets for handling actions on the grid. I can scaffold this out pretty quickly with standard MVT but is there a simpler way?

22 comments

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nnadams
I'm also interested in something like this. I've been considering writing one because I already start most projects with djangobuilder.io, which generates a project, models, and test skeleton. I've found that very useful when I have a lot of models.
rlawson
djangobuilder.io looks nice - thanks! Yeah so many times it seems like I want to display a grid and a few operations on that grid of data (a lot of times that could be handled with sql or sometimes with a little python). I end up repeating that pattern a lot
timwis
django admin? https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.1/ref/contrib/admin/
rlawson
Well django admin is great but I want something I can low code a few screens in my main app. Say I want to present the user with a grid of orders to be processed and also an action for each row called "Release Order". I'd like to write a sql statement to display the orders and also a little python handler for the release order logic. I can of course do this with regular Django but it's a couple views, probably two templates, configure a couple urls and on that template pull in a friendlier js table like aggrid, etc
timwis
Well this isn't related to django, but it sounds like Retool may be what you're after: https://retool.com/
rlawson
Thanks! I looked into retool and it's very nice but what I really want is an embeddable retool experience in Django. Cause for 50% of my app I need all the power Django provides. Then the other 50% is hey look at this grid and here are a few options for you. I guess I could split into 2 apps but then that has it's own cost.
FireInsight
Or make your own low-code django library, to create even more code you have to maintain.
greenie_beans
datasette? https://datasette.io/
rlawson
I was thinking datasette is read only - does it do crud now?
WorldMaker
The Django/Postgres-specific Datasette "cousin" Django SQL Dashboard [1] lives side-by-side with the Django admin so you could in theory use the Django admin for a bunch of crud and build Datasette-like dashboards next to it with relatively low code. It's mostly still the database model building in the first place that is the bottleneck.

[1] https://datasette.io/tools/django-sql-dashboard

rlawson
Interesting! I contribute to django-sql-explorer which is very similar. I'll take a look at how django-sql-dashboard is implemented. Thanks.
tomdekan
Regarding accelerating UI, I’ve been building my UI for my product (https://amazing.photos) using Webflow and Django.

I convert all Webflow code into Django templates and neat JavaScript.

This approach with Webflow and Django is around 5-8x faster for me.

rlawson
Interesting - so you use their designer to do the front end? And then export and hook it up to Django?
tomdekan
Exactly. Here’s a simple video I made explaining it: https://youtu.be/ohJzBkgSIMQ

I now have a more advanced version of the import script than the video that adds native async forms and allows for Django for loops. Let me know if you want it.

aitchnyu
Baserow uses Django as a superweapon. They use django db libs to generate the underlying database tables via a web UI. They take full advantage of dynamically generated models to query them too.

And of course I have my own idea for a web spreadsheet. The tables can be generated via UI and we can add small scripts to validate, filter, scheduled tasks etc. When stuff gets too complex for a low-code platform, we can drop down a layer of abstraction or migrate to traditional Django. It can reuse other Django apps like those CMS apps. Making a prototype of this.

https://baserow.io/blog/how-baserow-lets-users-generate-djan...

rlawson
wow, that is very impressive. They have really pushed the ORM. Good luck with your prototype!
bjourne
I don't think anything is faster than django-admin. If you invest time in understanding how it works then you can accomplish a lot in very little time. Results are of course not perfect, but good enough for many quick-and-dirty projects.