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Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

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Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#451

Post by midgetjones »

teleforce wrote: post #430
midgetjones wrote: post #120

A few years ago, my wife and I decided to adopt a rescue cat from battersea.org.uk. However, it was a frustrating experience as the staff didn't always update the website regularly, and we'd find that any suitable cats would be snapped up before we'd even seen them. I spotted that the website served its data to the frontend via an unsecured internal JSON API, so I built an Elixir app that would poll the API endpoint…

This a great example on the usefulness of data availability via JSON API. If the data is read only it's a GOOD thing especially for non-confidential data that are meant to be public, every government agency should open their public data like this.

Absolutely! My original plan had been to scrape their website using Selenium or similar.

I quickly noticed that they had employed lazy loading, which would have made that all but impossible. It took me a good few minutes to realise that if they had lazy loading, there had to be a backend, and I was overjoyed when I found out it was serving JSON.

All in all, it was probably much cheaper for them to have me hitting the API endpoint every minute than scraping the website even once a day

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#452

Post by advancingu »

tusharmath wrote: post #409
advancingu wrote: post #397

I created an open source library that turns structured text data (YAML) in a Git repository on the fly into a GraphQL API with CRUD queries / mutations. All that is needed in the repository is a plain text GraphQL schema file that defines what the data structures look like. The Git repository itself can be located on GitHub, GitLab, or in the local filesystem. https://github.com/commitspark/graphql-api

Have you considered using https://tailcall.run It can automatically create a high performance graphql API.

Thanks for the pointer. Did you have a specific scenario in mind where this would be helpful?

Tailcall looks like something that could go in front of my library as an orchestration gateway.

However, as my library intentionally does not include any transport mechanism, you'd first have to expose it over HTTP (e.g. https://github.com/commitspark/example-http-express ). In my case, I actually have a couple of Next.js web apps where I load the library directly into the code instead and pass my queries to it without first going through HTTP.

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#453

Post by midgetjones »

fortydegrees wrote: post #407
midgetjones wrote: post #120

A few years ago, my wife and I decided to adopt a rescue cat from battersea.org.uk. However, it was a frustrating experience as the staff didn't always update the website regularly, and we'd find that any suitable cats would be snapped up before we'd even seen them. I spotted that the website served its data to the frontend via an unsecured internal JSON API, so I built an Elixir app that would poll the API endpoint…

I have a similar story of accessing an internal JSON API for my own benefit. I left my airpods in a car I rented using zipcar. I spoke to support etc but nothing had been handed in. I checked to see if the car was still where I left it so that I could re-hire and claim them, but it had been moved. The app tells you the 'name' of the car you rented which is used as an identifier. It also shows a map of where all avail…

That's amazing!

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#454

Post by 000ooo000 »

A telegram bot (C#, SQLite, Raspberry Pi) which parses messages in a dedicated chat between my partner and I which we use to record shared purchases made outside of our joint bank account (we share only this one joint account and manually top it up as needed). The bot responds to commands like reset, summary, etc. Periodically we'll ask the bot to summarise and tell us all the purchases and if one of us owes the other money.

I plan to use this as a base for a few other bots I have in mind (homelab control/monitoring for e.g.).

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#455

Post by sevagh »

I wrote pq [1] (protobuf parser cli) at a company where I was told to "just use the tool another engineer wrote" which was in C++, in a really uncompileable/abandoned/unusable state

I wrote goat [2] (EBS disk attacher) at the same company on a solo project where I needed to create a "Kafka-cluster-IaC" recipe in Terraform and wanted us to be able to replace EC2 broker instances dynamically but preserve their data on the EBS volume

In both cases, existing tools weren't helping me and I wrote these to help myself immediately (and they became general/popular a bit later)

[1] https://github.com/sevagh/pq

[2] https://github.com/sevagh/goat

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#456

Post by haltcase »

mgirkins wrote: post #418
johny115 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks interesting but with paywalled trial, you might as well say on homepage "we don't want anyone to use this app, go away".

I've been testing it out recently and it's been quite successful but I am about to change that to a soft paywall. I'm thinking 7 days with an occasional nagging paywall and then you get an extra 30 days free if you add credit card details. What do you think?

7 days is already significantly limiting, the "nagging paywall" would drive me away from the app entirely. The extra free time from adding card info isn't terrible. I imagine you'd need to play with the numbers, e.g., is 7 days even enough time to evaluate the added complexity over a traditional to-do app? Maybe it could be 14.

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#457

Post by plank »

netsharc wrote: post #394
plank wrote: post #38

I created several. The most recent: an Android app that lets you navigate any map, e.g. the one you just make a picture of: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.vanderplank... I use this one myself: we like to take walks, and not always are the routes marked that clearly. Still only a handful of users, but usefull I guess for anyone that wished that e.g. Google maps made it possible to upload a picture to…

Edit: found a YouTube video, seems like it does what I think it does. Although the video could be a lot better, it's currently Boomer PowerPoint (sorry). LetsDoThis, is that an app for a group of people? It'd be interesting if say a group of 5 people want to decide on where to go for lunch, dinner; or where to sightsee on a travel day... I guess the choices need to be granular too, e.g. a steak restaurant would be "H…

Reaction to your other points:

-1- Boomer powerpoint. Yes, guilty. Although I made it using Prezi, I guess my education is from the previous century;-0

-2- I started with yes/no/no opinion, but decided this did not scale enough. You could off course discuss the options in e.g. a Whatsapp group before (‘does it have to have a vegan option?’ Or ‘Within Brooklyn area’), but do not see a viable solution in which I could ‘design’ this out.

-3- I actually started with sharing a base64 string / uuencoded / version, but decided this was to errorprone (in an earlier version you could ‘paste’ a string which was then interpreted as a string of choices). But when the choices can be any link, e.g. https://example.com/some_deep_path/escape_room_in_NewYersey, and the next be a text option as ‘lets just take a walk into the Mountains from the Grand Canyon’, I think limitations of size becomes a problem. E.g. SMS would not be an option anymore to share the options with others.

Since I developed this app, other options have become available, e.g. Whatsapp has a survey option. The only real ‘unique selling point’ is the quick access to Netflix categories (although not all choices may be available everywhere in the world), or the tripadvisor and the fork options for restaurants. And off course the brilliant ‘swipe left/right’ to vote for or against an option;-0

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#458

Post by rft »

alexpovel wrote: post #57

https://github.com/alexpovel/srgn It grew out of a niche, almost historical need: using a QWERTY keyboard, but needing access to German Umlauts (ä, ö, ü, as well as ß). Switching keyboard layouts is possible but exhausting (it's much more pleasant sticking to one); using modifier keys is similarly tedious, and custom setups break and aren't portable. So this tool can do: $ echo 'Gruess Gott, Poeten und Abenteuergruet…

Now that is a tool I never knew I needed, great idea! I get by with the compose key or just googling the Umlaut if I have not set it up.

I guess I have just nerdsniped myself into building a script/hack that can automatically edit the clipboard and/or selected text on button press. There goes my weekend, but thank you for building this part!

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#459

Post by pgm8705 »

I have been golfing in a weekly league for 10+ years and was frustrated by the complex spreadsheet our league manager built to track everything. I Figured there must be an app we could replace it with... While there were plenty, most were severely outdated or simply did not do what we needed. So I created https://golfsheet.app

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#460

Post by dolmen »

olegp wrote: post #436

A browser based controller for the LEGO Duplo train using the Web Bluetooth API. It works best on mobiles in portrait mode and you can find it here: https://legotrain.netlify.app/ The source is a single HTML file that also contains the JS. Just view source and modify if you're interested in taking this further. What's cool is that the protocol allows you to receive readings from the train and not just send commands.…

Also have a look at Pybricks.com to control LEGO Powered Up devices (trains, Technic, Boost, Mindstorms).
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