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Show HN: Forms – Easy custom database applications

sonadier.com

41–50 of 62 posts

Re: Show HN: Forms – Easy custom database applications

#41
The thing that always stops me from making something similar to this (other than willpower and interest) is: how do you enforce constraints on the data? How do you keep it from accumulating junk data if you're cutting out the role of an application validating it?

It could be that this is really only for directly-mapped CRUD data, but I haven't seen a lot of applications out there that don't require at least a little bit of integrity checking.

Re: Show HN: Forms – Easy custom database applications

#42
post #41

The thing that always stops me from making something similar to this (other than willpower and interest) is: how do you enforce constraints on the data? How do you keep it from accumulating junk data if you're cutting out the role of an application validating it? It could be that this is really only for directly-mapped CRUD data, but I haven't seen a lot of applications out there that don't require at least a little…

Which kind of junk data do you mean? We have quite a few constraints based on fields, so a number field will only accept integers/decimals and it's validated backend. We also have a regex system that is validated backend, so you can force user input for a particular field to conform to it.

We're working on adding custom Javascript scripting partially for this purpose. The idea is to set scripts that will run at different parts of the submission process. For example, one script runs for the submission page and you can control the frontend. Another would run backend in sandboxed NodeJS with custom validation rules on each new submission.

Re: Show HN: Forms – Easy custom database applications

#45
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Event based code, or even webservice callouts would be a killer feature. It was the first thing I started looking for on the page. With just a few more features this could easily capture a portion of the SMB market who's interested in something as flexible as Salesforce, but can't swallow the $85+ monthly cost per user.

Disclaimer: I work for a sister-company. "We" have something like this with event based "model actions" which also support calling out to webservices (both rest and soap). Shameless "competitor plug"; will remove if considered inappropriate: http://www.bettyblocks.com/en edit: App/marketing is being translated as we speak; you guys will be able to figure things out right? ;-)

Don't worry about it, it's not inappropriate at all. Good luck with your product!

Re: Show HN: Forms – Easy custom database applications

#46

what is your tech stack like?

Any kind of API / easy programattic access the results?

Ideal Scenario:

Can iFrame the form on own webapp (pass an ID iFrame in url), use it to collect data through custom form. Then can access result of this data via an API.

Re: Show HN: Forms – Easy custom database applications

#47

It looks nice at first glance. Eventually someone, somewhere, is going to get this right and it will be extremely popular. Maybe it's you, who knows. I bet there are hundreds of millions of dollars spent every year on full on huge projects that are essentially a simple CRUD application. Do you support writing event based code in some way?

We're working on integration with Zapier at the moment, it should be ready for the next major release. Do you have any suggestions for other event-based systems? Zapier is the only one I'm familiar with.

https://ifttt.com/

Re: Show HN: Forms – Easy custom database applications

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't Access be used for web applications?

As far as I'm aware Access can only be used on one local machine, unless you put some networking system together yourself. There's no web-based version either that I know of.

Last time I used Access for anything (at all), you could put the database file on a shared drive and multiple people could use it. This was always clunky though.

Re: Show HN: Forms – Easy custom database applications

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm aware Access can only be used on one local machine, unless you put some networking system together yourself. There's no web-based version either that I know of.

Last time I used Access for anything (at all), you could put the database file on a shared drive and multiple people could use it. This was always clunky though.

You can do it via office365/sharepoint. You can deploy Access "apps" and let sharepoint online be the front end for the forms.
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