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Show HN: Canonic: A low-code platform to build APIs in minutes

canonic.dev

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Re: Show HN: Canonic: A low-code platform to build APIs in minutes

#21

Post by mxuribe »

prathama wrote: post #17
lgreiv wrote: post #4

I feel like this could become a go-to service for experimenting and prototyping APIs for me, given a reasonable pricing model. A few oddities caught my eye, though, e.g. duplicates of the edited field were created when leaving the field panel. Is there a plan to add a feature to export the API in a standard like OpenAPI?

Thank you so much for going through the platform. We've just launched and sadly some bugs sneaked through. We are actively working on the fixes and they should be out asap. Lock-ins have been our biggest concern here at Canonic. We wanted to ensure that if the user wanted to move/integrate with different services, that experience be as seamless as possible. We are exploring both OpenAPI and GraphQL schema export opti…

> Lock-ins have been our biggest concern here at Canonic. We wanted to ensure that if the user wanted to move/integrate with different services, that experience be as seamless as possible...

Now THAT is worth me paying for! I'm now really looking forward to learning about your pricing, as I'm quite interested in using your platform. All the best!

Re: Show HN: Canonic: A low-code platform to build APIs in minutes

#22

Post by prathama »

mxuribe wrote: post #21
prathama wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for going through the platform. We've just launched and sadly some bugs sneaked through. We are actively working on the fixes and they should be out asap. Lock-ins have been our biggest concern here at Canonic. We wanted to ensure that if the user wanted to move/integrate with different services, that experience be as seamless as possible. We are exploring both OpenAPI and GraphQL schema export opti…

> Lock-ins have been our biggest concern here at Canonic. We wanted to ensure that if the user wanted to move/integrate with different services, that experience be as seamless as possible... Now THAT is worth me paying for! I'm now really looking forward to learning about your pricing, as I'm quite interested in using your platform. All the best!

Thank you! Coming soon :)

Re: Show HN: Canonic: A low-code platform to build APIs in minutes

#23

Post by blacksmith_tb »

michaelmior wrote: post #9

> the fastest way to solution it I've never heard "solution" used as a verb before. It reads rather odd to me, but the product seems interesting :)

A trend in modern English, I'd say - though not necessarily an improvement, e.g. "he gave me a book -> he gifted me a book" and here, like you pointed out, they could easily have said "the fastest way to solve it" instead.

Re: Show HN: Canonic: A low-code platform to build APIs in minutes

#24

Post by xgenecloud »

Canonic Team, Congrats shipping this. UI appears slick & menus snappy.

Faced an issue creating column in a new model[1] - Can't click on any of the button in image [1] (I'm on Mac & Firefox if that helps)

We are in similar space & open source : we automatically generate REST & GraphQL APIs automatically on any Microsoft SQL Server, Postgres & MySQL databases. Do give us a try. https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud

[1] : https://imgur.com/efPfFRx

Re: Show HN: Canonic: A low-code platform to build APIs in minutes

#25

Post by prathama »

xgenecloud wrote: post #24

Canonic Team, Congrats shipping this. UI appears slick & menus snappy. Faced an issue creating column in a new model[1] - Can't click on any of the button in image [1] (I'm on Mac & Firefox if that helps) We are in similar space & open source : we automatically generate REST & GraphQL APIs automatically on any Microsoft SQL Server, Postgres & MySQL databases. Do give us a try. https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud…

Thanks for trying it out!

We have been experiencing some issues on Firefox, should get sorted in the next 24 hours.

XgeneCloud looks slick! Will definitely give it a go, thank you for sharing it across

Re: Show HN: Canonic: A low-code platform to build APIs in minutes

#27

Post by quickthrower2 »

If I am weighing up:

* Complete no code - Bubble

* Out of the box code - Next.js etc.

* Code - Node JS / Express etc.

* Canonic

Where do you fit in? Who chooses you over the other options?

Because the disadvantage of yours is lock-in / pricing / up-skilling to a non-standard way. Same problems as many others - Bubble.io etc.

There must be some killer win you get from using this.

Bubble lets people who have never coded build a rough MVP, maybe get some orders, so I can see why people fork up the $ and struggle through that UI, because the alternative is a 4-5 figure fee from a freelance programmer.

But I don't think Canonic avoids code as you still need to do the front end. (Maybe that's it? You create a front end version of Canonic next?)

So I'm interested in who will buy this and why.

Re: Show HN: Canonic: A low-code platform to build APIs in minutes

#28

Post by prathama »

jackhack wrote: post #26

Am I the only one who cannot load this page? It renders for a brief moment, I can just begin to see the rocket animation, then it renders as a plain blue page. Same results on Firefox 78.0.2.esr (64 bit) and Safari Version 11.1.2 (11605.3.8.1).

That's certainly weird. While we look into it, you can signup directly at https://app.canonic.dev/signup

Re: Show HN: Canonic: A low-code platform to build APIs in minutes

#29

Post by prathama »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #27

If I am weighing up: * Complete no code - Bubble * Out of the box code - Next.js etc. * Code - Node JS / Express etc. * Canonic Where do you fit in? Who chooses you over the other options? Because the disadvantage of yours is lock-in / pricing / up-skilling to a non-standard way. Same problems as many others - Bubble.io etc. There must be some killer win you get from using this. Bubble lets people who have never code…

Thank you for your detailed feedback,

Out of the ones mentioned, we are probably closest to Bubble. However, as you rightly said we are currently focused on the backend API building problem.

As we've been pivoting to be a more citizen-first non-tech friendly platform, frontend on Canonic is something we have been discussing and debating frequently.

The main concern with a frontend builder for us is the need for it to truly be as close to a design tool as possible. The frontend of an application frequently ends up being unique to accommodate branding and creative freedom and becomes hard to fit in a traditional drag-n-drop tool. We just want to make sure, we are truly solving that problem and not just making another frontend builder that people have to wrangle to get their designs to fit.

As for lock-in, we do want to avoid it all costs and our working on strategies and features that would allow you to migrate in and out of Canonic with ease.

Currently, Canonic is a great fit for anyone who wants to build a backends quickly and without writing code. Some level of technical know-how is, however, required. We do hope to eliminate that soon.

P.S. Canonic plans to have a free forever plan for getting started and hobbyist projects

Re: Show HN: Canonic: A low-code platform to build APIs in minutes

#30

Post by CallMeJim »

So I've spent a bit of time playing around with this (self taught dev, mostly front-end) - really impressed so far.

The app is a bit buggy and features are relatively sparse, but it is intuitive to use and I can see the promise.

Within 20 minutes, I had an API structure fairly well plotted out, along with REST endpoints, a GraphQL schema and playground, documentation, and places to add webhooks (although no way to programmatically add webhooks easily, as far as I could see).

I may be over-rating this simply because it comes at a good time for me - I recently spent hours reading through the JSON:API specification [0], and trying to figure out how it is different to the OpenAPI specification [1], and how to actually get into implementation, and generally getting bogged down in levels of detail that I never knew existed.

The only fear I have with this service is that the pricing structure will be too high. I would be keen on a usage-based pricing model based on amount of data stored, with a free tier for personal projects. This would allow me to play around with it myself for free, while internal business tools with higher usage would be paid.

Interested in talking about what pricing may turn out to be - if you want to get in touch, my email address is on a feature request I submitted about adding a datetime field.

(edit to remove extraneous character, in the process adding lots more extraneous characters)

[0] https://jsonapi.org/format/ [1] https://swagger.io/specification

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