Ask HN: Easiest way to build a CRUD app?

Since you'll be running JavaScript in the browser, it also uses Node.js for the backend. This allows you to use the same code for validation, business logic, etc, and it specifically has multiple patterns to encourage this.

It's all one bundle that you run locally (or on one machine in production, or two if you want to split out the DB, which I'd recommend). By default, it uses Docker to run locally, but I've included instructions to run it on bare-metal, if you choose. For subscriptions, I use Stripe, but I mean you gotta use _someone_ for that, and I found their API to be easiest to work with, and thus modify.

I specifically built it so that I wouldn't have to keep re-creating the wheel when I wanted to try out a new SaaS idea as just one person, so it should work just fine for someone who doesn't want to require a team, but it should also work well for people who do want to scale to teams: one of the core components is that you break up work into "features" which are directories that repeat the common subdirectories (api, lib, ui) and make it easy to keep commonly-used code together.

Full docs are available publicly on the site, and if you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer!

I would similarly say a Rails app that uses a filesystem DB for records, sessions, logging, etc despite never having touched Ruby more than 3 times in the last 2 decades.

Many of your listed points are puzzling though.

> No single language can do all of that successfully, unless you ditch GUI and client-server models

There's nothing in the requirements about a GUI or client/server model. A CRUD app by API is pretty common.

> - Without external dependencies you will either be reinventing the wheel or adding lots of layers

No need for reinventing or using additional "layers" (whatever that's supposed to mean).

> - All software can be compromised or hacked, more layers equal more attack surface

"not easily" can be interpreted many ways, but assuring that nothing is 100% secure is irrelevant.

The question is quite sophisticated, within modern technology choices. However, the ease of CRUD app generation has been streamlined by Ruby to a ridiculous degree. Ruby has been great for this kind of thing for a long time, despite it's problems as a language for larger applications. People who are recommending Java, using Spring or not, are either ignorant or in denial. Java is a horrific choice for development speed and reliability for what amounts to requirements for a small application. Additionally, big/popular frameworks like Laravel/Django etc are also going to slower to develop and more problematic than a simple Rails app. This is primarily because of the ecosystems that shun the concept of a filesystem as a DB because it breaks their sensibilities about "the right way to do things".

Im the app, if you have the right permission, you can use xml to describe tables, forms, and you can use lua to respond on the sever side to control and database events.

It is very staright forward, and you can do it all directly on the web.

It is still alpha, but if you are interested let me jnow and i will open a playground for you.

Even $10 a month becomes annoying after 5 years.

I built this: https://forever-free-cloud-app-starter.chriszhu.me/ as a way to build a basic CRUD app that would be free to host forever.