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Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

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Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#21

Post by sojournerc »

Scarblac wrote: post #13
michaelteter wrote: post #11

It’s mostly just a UI for CRUD. And most systems are more complex, requiring UIs that operate on business logic. Rails and Phoenix also offer similar features (called scaffolds), but they are optional. I’m sure other frameworks have similar options. Meanwhile, Django (like Python) sometimes has unconventional names and approaches to doing common things, so that makes the pair unpleasant and awkward for those of us wi…

> most systems are more complex Citation needed. We also have got a _lot_ of mileage out of it over the years.

Ok, how complex are _your_ systems? Simple table views are available through a number of database management software (dbeaver). What does django provide beyond that?

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#22

Post by resoluteteeth »

It's hard to automatically generate a useful admin dashboard like this in a framework that's not oriented around crud apps with certain assumptions baked in.

Most frameworks/platforms that are oriented around crud apps, where the framework itself does have a concept of models, do have some sort of admin dashboard feature.

Flask is a microframework that doesn't make assumptions about any database/models, so it's impossible for it to do something like this.

However, there is arguably a limited range of apps where an automatically generated admin dashboard is going to be useful anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#23

Post by oooyay »

> Why has Django Admin proliferated so strongly in the Django ecosystem while being unreplicated elsewhere?

It's useful when I start a project, but if that project matures I generally replace it with something tailor made to the application. In other languages and framework I end up building an admin panel too, just in Django I end up doing that later in the process.

Replicating the Django admin is tough too. It's made to be highly generic and it remains stable release to release. Any project seeking to replicate that would need to replicate Djangos abstraction model in order to achieve any kind of stability like the Admin view has.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#24

Post by arrowsmith »

reyostallenberg wrote: post #16

Admin for Symfony Framework ( PHP ) https://symfony.com/bundles/EasyAdminBundle/current/index.ht... Admin for Laravel (PHP) https://nova.laravel.com/ Java Spring Boot https://docs.spring-boot-admin.com/current/getting-started.h... I think many other Frameworks have this, did you search for it?

Phoenix has Kaffy: https://github.com/aesmail/kaffy

Super-simple to set up and it's been perfectly adequate for my app's needs so far.

To answer OP's original question: Django Admin isn't a killer feature because the same kind of thing is available for most other Django-like frameworks, with the only difference being that it's usually a third party library rather than something built into the framework itself.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#25

Post by acdha »

sojournerc wrote: post #21
Scarblac wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most systems are more complex Citation needed. We also have got a _lot_ of mileage out of it over the years.

Ok, how complex are _your_ systems? Simple table views are available through a number of database management software (dbeaver). What does django provide beyond that?

What do you think is missing – your broad claim was made authoritatively enough that I’m assuming you had bad experiences somewhere?

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#26

Post by [deleted] »

acdha wrote: post #25
sojournerc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, how complex are _your_ systems? Simple table views are available through a number of database management software (dbeaver). What does django provide beyond that?

What do you think is missing – your broad claim was made authoritatively enough that I’m assuming you had bad experiences somewhere?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#27

Post by the__alchemist »

I love the Rust language and tooling, but don't use it for web dev because it lacks something like Django. I build web backends in Python because of Django. Not exclusively because of admin, but that's part of it. (Other parts include built in DB auto migrations, auth, email, templates, [de]serialization, tightly-integrated ORM etc)

I can't figure out the intended workflow for using the Rust frameworks. When I ask (eg rust webdev communities) how to build a website using them, I get no responses, or comments about how Diesel is better than Django's ORM.

It seems more doable with Flask etc in Python because of the robust ecosystem of third-party addons, but it still seems like a complexity trap due to potential mutual incompatibilities between them.

The admin page in particular is excellent for debugging, changing config, quick queries etc.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#28

Post by oooyay »

mdisc wrote: post #6

I think it has to do with the times. Because sl admin came up in a pre DRF time when people use Django to serve templates, the work to build it into the framework came more naturally. With lots of more modern web app frameworks mainly focusing on just being APIs for single page applications, having html templates and stuff in the core project and having contributors build this stuff in doesn’t happen as naturally. I…

Counter point: I actually use DRF and the Django Admin. They're not really at competition with each other.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#29

Post by karaterobot »

I've been out of web development for about four years now, but I think Django is unusual in providing the admin dashboard for free. Most frameworks don't want to devote the resources to that when there are third-party options you can fairly easily (ha ha) bolt on to your project. Speculatively, it may be that Django comes from a time before such a wide variety of self-service solutions existed, and based on the newspaper use case they built the framework to support, they felt like it was worth the time to do it.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#30

Post by rburhum »

michaelteter wrote: post #11

It’s mostly just a UI for CRUD. And most systems are more complex, requiring UIs that operate on business logic. Rails and Phoenix also offer similar features (called scaffolds), but they are optional. I’m sure other frameworks have similar options. Meanwhile, Django (like Python) sometimes has unconventional names and approaches to doing common things, so that makes the pair unpleasant and awkward for those of us wi…

It is not just a UI just for CRUD. You can easily add custom actions (calls to web services, export/imports, heavy background tasks that operate on a row or collections of rows), filters, related tables with custom behavior, display custom derived/calculated values, etc. Additionally, you can skin it easily - and in some cases, even create dashboards in a very simple manner. Check out out Django Unfold for an example https://github.com/unfoldadmin/django-unfold
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