Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use?

#1

Post by mybestaccount » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

Needs:

The app is for a real estate company. They have a list of 100-200 homes for sale. I need a low-code solution that provides a user dashboard + api. The user dashboard is for the agent to go in and add quickly add listing + images. The api is for the mobile app to fetch the listings.

I've been looking at cms solutions like contentful.com but they seem geared towards blog publishing. The API is complex and cumbersome to use too.

Re: Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use?

#2

Post by lunatuna » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

We’ve been using Outsystms with a lot of positive feedback from devs and users. Not sure how the licensing model would work in your situation.

Re: Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use?

#3

Post by mrsareen » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

try strapi.io

Re: Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use?

#4

Post by sbuccini » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 3:10 AM UTC

I'd recommend checking out Firebase. The Firebase console might give you everything you need, or you could just build a really thin dashboard yourself on top of Firebase auth.

Re: Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use?

#5

Post by aciswhat » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 3:37 AM UTC

https://www.sanity.io/ is another good CMS

Re: Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use?

#6

Post by AlchemistCamp » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:36 AM UTC

Rails or Laravel. There's a massive ecosystem of libraries and the frameworks are designed to reduce the amount of code needed.

Re: Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use?

#7

Post by g00m » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 6:18 AM UTC

WordPress has an API and dashboard.

Re: Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use?

#8

Post by andrefuchs » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 7:49 AM UTC

You could easily use a Google Sheet for that. They provide an API and feed, embed options, and there are services like sheet2site.com (never used, not affiliated)

Re: Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use?

#9

Post by aosaigh » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 7:52 AM UTC

You could try Craft CMS. It has a UI layer for configuring your content and is much more flexible then the likes of Wordpress.

It’s got a nice publishing experience which makes it easy for clients and it has a GraphQL API built in so that you can send content to a mobile app. It’s not free but it’s a great CMS that isn’t focused solely on blog publishing.

Re: Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use?

#10

Post by atsushin » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 10:22 AM UTC

I'd give Airtable a try!

https://airtable.com/