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Show HN: Sanity – A Headless CMS Construction Kit in JavaScript

sanity.io

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Re: Show HN: Sanity – A Headless CMS Construction Kit in JavaScript

#11

Post by danr4 »

evenw wrote: post #7
tarr11 wrote: post #2

This feels like a CRUD app builder disguised as a visual programming tool. I generally avoid those things because they are hard to debug or extend. Perhaps this is different because of GraphQL? In this case, I would typically reach for a battle-tested CRUD building framework like Rails that gives you JSON APIs for free. I am not as familiar with GraphQL frameworks, but I suppose that I could find one as well if I rea…

Sanity.io designer / co-founder here. We've been discussing how to explain what Sanity is and stuck with “CMS” to give people an everyday use case, casting a new product category in something old. There's the term «Headless CMS», but that doesn't capture the data modelling and query capability well either. And for sure, this way of thinking about content isn't new. People have been building bespoke relational databas…

Looking over your landing page and docs it seems like really thought out product and a lot of effort being put in it. With that being said, I still can't understand the use cases for this. Who are your typical users? What do they use this for?

Re: Show HN: Sanity – A Headless CMS Construction Kit in JavaScript

#12

Post by kmelve »

DavidPP wrote: post #5

THe value would in the "Studio" app which is the hardest portion to replicate (if it's well done). But I would prefer paying a license for the SDK and host the API myself than having to rely on a third party for something so crucial to a business.

Well, it has got some real time data syncing stuff going on (which gives it Google Docs capabilities), I don't think that is trivial to do yourself.

Re: Show HN: Sanity – A Headless CMS Construction Kit in JavaScript

#13

Post by kmelve »

danr4 wrote: post #11
evenw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanity.io designer / co-founder here. We've been discussing how to explain what Sanity is and stuck with “CMS” to give people an everyday use case, casting a new product category in something old. There's the term «Headless CMS», but that doesn't capture the data modelling and query capability well either. And for sure, this way of thinking about content isn't new. People have been building bespoke relational databas…

Looking over your landing page and docs it seems like really thought out product and a lot of effort being put in it. With that being said, I still can't understand the use cases for this. Who are your typical users? What do they use this for?

User here! We use it for our website, but also for events and registrations, as well as providing data to various Slack-integrations. I cover it a bit more here: https://hackernoon.com/headless-in-love-with-sanity-68996057...

Re: Show HN: Sanity – A Headless CMS Construction Kit in JavaScript

#14

Post by rulusidaze »

atombender wrote: post #8
tarr11 wrote: post #2

This feels like a CRUD app builder disguised as a visual programming tool. I generally avoid those things because they are hard to debug or extend. Perhaps this is different because of GraphQL? In this case, I would typically reach for a battle-tested CRUD building framework like Rails that gives you JSON APIs for free. I am not as familiar with GraphQL frameworks, but I suppose that I could find one as well if I rea…

Sanity isn't a visual programming tool. You can write Sanity applications using JavaScript and whatever tech you want (React, Node.js, etc.). To provide some background: Your typical modern web application typically revolves around a central CRUD API that you then build apps on top of. You'll typicall have a web app and maybe a native mobile app. But you also need an "admin app" that provides content editing, login,…

Thanks for this well-written and concise explanation. It took me from "what the hell is this BS" to "oh that makes sense."

I bother with this "thanks" message because I was ready to write a tirade about the technophile echo chamber of nonsense web widgets that seem to show up on HN regularly; solutions in search of problems that should never exist in the first place. Unfortunately, Sanity's website screams "we got some graphics people together to dress up some code we stole and obfuscated from GitHub," instead of "professional solution to a real problem." They should just replace the whole design with your reply here, in plain text. But then I guess it would be far more difficult to convince the CIO to adopt.

There should be some kind of hidden standard file on all these sites that you can go to, like "sanity.io/ACTUAL.txt" or something. It would just give you the actual story of what's happening, and not use words like "touchpoint," nor have 90s Hollywood garbage flying all over the screen. Again, I understand the purpose of the lightshow, but it usually causes me to immediately close the tab. I only stuck around for this because the problem of CMSes sucking is all too real.

Re: Show HN: Sanity – A Headless CMS Construction Kit in JavaScript

#15

Post by tarr11 »

atombender wrote: post #8
tarr11 wrote: post #2

This feels like a CRUD app builder disguised as a visual programming tool. I generally avoid those things because they are hard to debug or extend. Perhaps this is different because of GraphQL? In this case, I would typically reach for a battle-tested CRUD building framework like Rails that gives you JSON APIs for free. I am not as familiar with GraphQL frameworks, but I suppose that I could find one as well if I rea…

Sanity isn't a visual programming tool. You can write Sanity applications using JavaScript and whatever tech you want (React, Node.js, etc.). To provide some background: Your typical modern web application typically revolves around a central CRUD API that you then build apps on top of. You'll typicall have a web app and maybe a native mobile app. But you also need an "admin app" that provides content editing, login,…

I don't know that I like "data first".

Every greenfield project starts with a data model, but eventually gets encumbered in lots of crazy, bespoke business logic. This happens 6 months to 2 years into a project when some person asks for "one little thing". I'd love to see people who have used this for a while talk about data migrations, constraints, and all the other cruft that ends up happening in software development of CRUD.

This reminds me of Microsoft Sharepoint without all the widgets (which is what I meant when I said "visual") or Salesforce or even Microsoft Access. All of which are fairly difficult to manage, but appeal to a certain kind of customer.

The problem comes in when you have some complex business logic (you need 2 levels of approval on a Tuesday to publish this data)

I'd rather write all that stuff in a popular programming language.

Re: Show HN: Sanity – A Headless CMS Construction Kit in JavaScript

#17

Post by DavidPP »

kmelve wrote: post #12
DavidPP wrote: post #5

THe value would in the "Studio" app which is the hardest portion to replicate (if it's well done). But I would prefer paying a license for the SDK and host the API myself than having to rely on a third party for something so crucial to a business.

Well, it has got some real time data syncing stuff going on (which gives it Google Docs capabilities), I don't think that is trivial to do yourself.

I meant specifically when building a CMS. Being able to build a CMS that is multilingual, that can adapt to any form of content and workflow + be easy to use for editors is much harder than implementing the underlying technology.

Re: Show HN: Sanity – A Headless CMS Construction Kit in JavaScript

#18

Post by evenw »

moeamaya wrote: post #9

Architect + Technologist here. When I saw the OMA and DS+R logos on your marketing site, I thought no way it's the Architecture firms...prob some niche technology companies in Europe. But lo and behold, you guys did build their new websites! For the HN crowd, OMA and DS+R are at the top of the field...as a tech analog maybe comparable to Stripe and OpenAI. I've been diving deep into the finding the right headless CMS…

Thank you! We so enjoyed those projects. Do get in touch if you have any questions on your excursion! There's a public Gitter (https://gitter.im/sanity-io/sanity) and I'm @even (https://twitter.com/even).

Re: Show HN: Sanity – A Headless CMS Construction Kit in JavaScript

#19

Post by lobster_johnson »

tarr11 wrote: post #15
atombender wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanity isn't a visual programming tool. You can write Sanity applications using JavaScript and whatever tech you want (React, Node.js, etc.). To provide some background: Your typical modern web application typically revolves around a central CRUD API that you then build apps on top of. You'll typicall have a web app and maybe a native mobile app. But you also need an "admin app" that provides content editing, login,…

I don't know that I like "data first". Every greenfield project starts with a data model, but eventually gets encumbered in lots of crazy, bespoke business logic. This happens 6 months to 2 years into a project when some person asks for "one little thing". I'd love to see people who have used this for a while talk about data migrations, constraints, and all the other cruft that ends up happening in software developme…

While true, any data model is susceptible to cruft, no matter what stack you use.

For complicated rules like your example use case, you can add anything you want to the client-side validation hooks. In fact, almost all data validation currently happens client-side.

It's true that you'd not be able to enforce anything particularly complex if you submit writes directly to the API, but we're planning on supporting webhook-based validation, where you register a webhook that will receive documents for approval. We've successfully used this pattern in past projects. For example, something that isn't easily expressed declaratively is Hacker News' rule that thread comments are only editable a certain amount of time after they're submitted. We, too, prefer this kind of thing to be implemented in code.

Disclosure: I work on the data store, but not on Sanity itself.

Re: Show HN: Sanity – A Headless CMS Construction Kit in JavaScript

#20

Post by kmelve »

DavidPP wrote: post #17
kmelve wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it has got some real time data syncing stuff going on (which gives it Google Docs capabilities), I don't think that is trivial to do yourself.

I meant specifically when building a CMS. Being able to build a CMS that is multilingual, that can adapt to any form of content and workflow + be easy to use for editors is much harder than implementing the underlying technology.

Yeah, sorry for misreading you. That's indeed a good point (although both things are hard ^^_).
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