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Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building websites and apps

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Re: Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building websites and apps

#31

Post by georg-malahov »

addisonj wrote: post #23

I have been using Plasmic for the last 3 months as part of a contract app where the goal was to get the technical, but not frontend experienced client able to do a lot of the design. I did a lot of custom work on components (like integrating the Supabase API and custom Auth for RLS support) as well as integrating some other endpoints/libraries. In short, I have gone pretty deep with it as a proper "app" builder compa…

I also started using Plasmic exactly 3 months ago and accomplished now one client project with all the backend/auth/frontend integrations entirely using plasmic. I agree with you that this is a great tool, that is far beyond other known builders and low-code solutions.

I'm curious about your approach to integrating APIs with Plasmic. Did you utilize Plasmic's backend integrations, or did you prefer a client-side fetcher?

In my case, I found that using backend integrations through Plasmic's servers resulted in noticeable latency issues, with response times varying between 1 to 3 seconds, which was quite slower compared to direct API calls that took no more than 200ms. Have you encountered similar challenges?

On another note, while the client-side Fetcher was a potential alternative, it fell short in several areas for my needs. Specifically, it lacked options for customizing SWR fetch options, built-in mutation support, and accessible state management. To address some of these issues, I've made a contribution through a pull request: https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic/pull/102. I thought it might be of interest to you. I would love to hear your thoughts on this and any insights you might have based on your experience.

Re: Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building websites and apps

#33

Post by chungwu »

nkozyra wrote: post #27
chungwu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plasmic isn't a one-time codegen tool, where you generate some code and then modify it to suit your needs. Instead, we've designed Plasmic code generation so that you can generate code, add some business logic, iterate on design, generate code again, without blowing anything away. You're never directly editing the code generated by Plasmic. You can check out how it works ( https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/codegen-guide…

> Instead, we've designed Plasmic code generation so that you can generate code, add some business logic, iterate on design, generate code again, without blowing anything away. You're never directly editing the code generated by Plasmic. I think that actually amplifies the concern. Basically it's "don't touch the output," but what if we want/need to?

We wanted Plasmic to be the source of truth for certain things (the css, the composition, etc), so that it is possible to re-generate code from Plasmic and continue iterating on your designs (design-to-code is never a one-time thing!). We've designed the generated code to be very instrumentable; you can pass in prop overrides for any part of the component, swap out parts of the component with other content, etc., so you can get the component to do what you need, without having to edit the component code itself.

Re: Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building websites and apps

#34

Post by jason_plasmic »

chungwu wrote: post #18
superfrank wrote: post #11

My question with these WYSIWYG editors is always how maintainable is the code they output? I have no problem using these on smaller projects that are fairly static, but on more complex things it has always felt to me like the time you save by using a tool like this, you end up losing when you want to do something not supported by the tool and you have to hack through the spaghetti code it outputs. Can anyone speak to…

Plasmic isn't a one-time codegen tool, where you generate some code and then modify it to suit your needs. Instead, we've designed Plasmic code generation so that you can generate code, add some business logic, iterate on design, generate code again, without blowing anything away. You're never directly editing the code generated by Plasmic. You can check out how it works ( https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/codegen-guide…

+1 to Chung's reply. There's also a loader API where you'll generally never need to see the code that is output. Check out the differences between loader API and codegen here: https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/loader-vs-codegen/

In case you still want to see the code from codegen, here's an example. We generate 3 files per page/component:

1. JS/TS: https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic/blob/master/platform/w...

2. CSS: https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic/blob/master/platform/w...

3. An entry point wrapper JS/TS file: https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic/blob/master/platform/w...

While 1 and 2 will be overwritten as you update your project in Plasmic (and therefore you should never modify it), the wrapper (3) is yours to customize as needed, like setting props or binding event handlers. In the above example, we computed how much free trial time a customer has. You can read more about the generated code here: https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/codegen-components/

Re: Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building websites and apps

#35

Post by chungwu »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #28
chungwu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plasmic at its core is a general React app builder. You can create components, add interactivity, and connect to other data sources. You can also bring in your own React components, so there's endless possibilities in extending the tool for your needs. Our users have used Plasmic to build all sorts of things, from websites and e-commerce storefronts, to Retool-like internal tools, to full web apps (major parts of the…

> You can also bring in your own React components What does that mean? Does it mean that you can import your own components like using a standard import statement?

Basically, you set up a "custom app host" -- stand up your server (which has your code components), and you add a route (say `https://yoursite.com/plasmic-host`) that renders a special `` component. When you open a Plasmic project that uses your custom app host, it loads your `/plasmic-host`, and the `` component bootstraps the Plasmic visual editor into the page. So now Plasmic studio is actually running on your page, and it can access your code components that you have registered to be used with Plasmic. We never see your code; it's a run-time integration.

Re: Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building websites and apps

#36

Post by chungwu »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #26
addisonj wrote: post #23

I have been using Plasmic for the last 3 months as part of a contract app where the goal was to get the technical, but not frontend experienced client able to do a lot of the design. I did a lot of custom work on components (like integrating the Supabase API and custom Auth for RLS support) as well as integrating some other endpoints/libraries. In short, I have gone pretty deep with it as a proper "app" builder compa…

> you do need someone who really knows react/next ecosystem to manage the underlying integration. So this is react specific? It doesn't say so in the home page. It vaguely hints at it with a "Bring your data sources, React components, deployment environments, design system, and more.".

It is possible to use Plasmic in other contexts, but to really unlock the power of Plasmic, yes you need to be using React.

Re: Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building websites and apps

#37

Post by nilsbunger »

xyzzyrz wrote: post #13

Excited to see this posted here! I think probably because we announced it going open source today. I think the GitHub page is probably a bit clearer than our website right now: https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic Basically, it's a visual page builder that plugs into your own Next.js/Remix/React/etc. codebase. Your marketing/content/design team can then build and publish pages without filing tickets on eng. This (co…

Looks really cool and ambitious!

Curious why you guys decided to go open-source, and whether that was always the plan.

Re: Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building websites and apps

#38

Post by georg-malahov »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #28
chungwu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plasmic at its core is a general React app builder. You can create components, add interactivity, and connect to other data sources. You can also bring in your own React components, so there's endless possibilities in extending the tool for your needs. Our users have used Plasmic to build all sorts of things, from websites and e-commerce storefronts, to Retool-like internal tools, to full web apps (major parts of the…

> You can also bring in your own React components What does that mean? Does it mean that you can import your own components like using a standard import statement?

No, if you use codegen, you should register your component by providing additional necessary metadata, like importPath, importName and others. Then you can use you component in the Studio same way like other builtin components. Check https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/code-components-ref/ for more details.

Re: Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building websites and apps

#39

Post by ___victor »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #26
addisonj wrote: post #23

I have been using Plasmic for the last 3 months as part of a contract app where the goal was to get the technical, but not frontend experienced client able to do a lot of the design. I did a lot of custom work on components (like integrating the Supabase API and custom Auth for RLS support) as well as integrating some other endpoints/libraries. In short, I have gone pretty deep with it as a proper "app" builder compa…

> you do need someone who really knows react/next ecosystem to manage the underlying integration. So this is react specific? It doesn't say so in the home page. It vaguely hints at it with a "Bring your data sources, React components, deployment environments, design system, and more.".

While Plasmic does offer the flexibility to export designs to other frameworks like Angular, Vue or even plain HTML, it is mainly targeting React. Some features, such as the ability to register custom components from the user's codebase, are React-specific.

Re: Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building websites and apps

#40

Post by xyzzyrz »

nilsbunger wrote: post #37
xyzzyrz wrote: post #13

Excited to see this posted here! I think probably because we announced it going open source today. I think the GitHub page is probably a bit clearer than our website right now: https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic Basically, it's a visual page builder that plugs into your own Next.js/Remix/React/etc. codebase. Your marketing/content/design team can then build and publish pages without filing tickets on eng. This (co…

Looks really cool and ambitious! Curious why you guys decided to go open-source, and whether that was always the plan.

I talk about the "why" a bit above, but we've talked about how to open source it internally since almost its inception, but there's work involved in open sourcing that we just had to prioritize like any other work item, as well as concerns around whether we were ready to support it (for instance, in light of rapidly changing code and data).
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