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Show HN: Daba – Turn your JSON into a database (daba.so)

15 points by zikero ↗ HN
Hi all, I built this tool when I needed a simple LocalStorage-esque database for a client project, and figured others might want something similar.

Basically turns your JSON into a query-able, hosted database in seconds. You can read/update/delete JSON files by path, just like you would in Javascript. So, something like get(”users[7].address”)

And while we’re at it, I also built a simple file storage service where you upload a file and it gives you the URL back.

A lot of my (and other devs friends') side projects will never require more data than a JSON file can handle. Yet we always have to go through the hoops of setting up and using databases meant to handle huge amounts of data.

There are many other services that could benefit from the same minimalist philosophy. The idea is to have a bunch of building blocks of different services, and let the developer scale up/down the complexity as they see fit. I'm working on more services for daba (In no particular order: SQLite db?, auth, emails, …)

You can use this for any applications where the data can fit in a JSON file. (e.g. Website CMS, blog, portfolio, small mobile apps, internal tools, …). You’ll be surprised at how much data a 20mb JSON file can hold: https://github.com/json-iterator/test-data/blob/master/large...

Let me know what you think

10 comments

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bigfanjs
I fully support this tool. I believe that this tool has the potential to make a significant positive impact on developers' productivity.
geoah
Sounds interesting but the create db doesn’t work on mobile, and there is no information on the site around what it does, how it works, whether its open source/paas/library/etc.
dogueto
Damn useful, needing this right now. Adding a user auth sounds like the next step for this tool. Also baving some sort of integration capability with CMS like WordPress sounds useful.

Also, unless you have developed your own database system (which i doubt :p), this tool may be able to widstand larger applications too. If not maybe have some automated migration option?

Kudos

aldyr
Very cool project. Right on with having to set up a full db everytime being a pain. Definitely would love to have auth as a next step, that would make it go from cool to awesome.
gshah2020
this is perfect. might be a great way to handle feature flags for me.
Dr_ejjil
nice! that seems interesting
brunovegreville
Great idea, I agree with the premise that a lot of (side-)projects start with basic needs in terms of DB.

Would be interested - to understand how you think about pricing in the future? - to understand how you see recent progress with LLMs impacting this project? I'd love to have the same UX (upload a JSON) but be able to query this JSON with NLP through GPT

robbiejs
Looks cool! If it had a bit more features (like add a column to the entire table) I would love to use it for DataGridXL demos (https://www.datagridxl.com/). I want the new version of this spreadsheet-like table editor also work with a remote database. So when a new row is added, daba `add()` method is called and the grid is reloaded with the latest data.