This seems ripe for an injection attack. Can it be inspected before running?
Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite
21–30 of 175 posts
Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite
#22This is great. Curious: this requires users to have a host app installed on their machine that can read .capsule file right? Won't that be a point of friction for distribution? Isn't html/css a better distribution mechanism as most computers already have the tech to run them?
The problem is that you can't save the user data in way that you can click a single file, similar to a Word or Excel file. I you think a about it, a Excel spreadsheet is also just UI + data in a single file.
Technically that was more MS Access :-)
Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite
#23This is great. Curious: this requires users to have a host app installed on their machine that can read .capsule file right? Won't that be a point of friction for distribution? Isn't html/css a better distribution mechanism as most computers already have the tech to run them?
You'd think so, but web browsers are downright lobotomizing the ability for local HTML files to run any meaningful javascript code. Want to run a JS file from the same directory? CORS ERROR!!!! Hence 200MB applications that are complete copies of the Chromium browser to run under 1MB of actual web code.
Isn't that the price of a relatively well sandboxed experience by browsers?
I've experienced the same limits building small tools for myself and friends that I wanted to contain in a single HTML file without external dependencies... but I understand why the same project without these restrictions could easily become malware, and ones that could be easily propagated.
Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite
#24Seems very "packable into a standalone binary" but doesn't seem like that is a planned use case.
The problem would be cross-platform support. In the end the capsule file is the standalone binary similar to a PDF or a Word document, you only need the viewer app to open any capsule file.
Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite
#25What is wrong with using IndexedDB?
For saving data in the capsule file it would create complexity regarding migration handling when updating the HTML file to add a field to a form for example. Keeping the data schemaless makes it also easier for merging data or importing data from a CSV.
Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite
#26My take: If your app needs to update and preserve state (using SQLite or any other DB), it is probably not something you want to pass around as a bundled file.
Or at least, it's extremely limiting, compared with hosting it somewhere on the web, which is not that hard to do these days.
Think of the workflow: Any time the state changes, you need to email a new Capsule file to whoever else is using the app. And one would think the state would change at least occasionally, because otherwise there's little reason to use a DB.
Alternatively, you can just host it on the web, the DB state dynamically updates, and it's automatically available to anyone with app access. Isn't that a lot simpler?
Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite
#27New way to deliver viruses just dropped! Great idea but it can be abused for sure.
Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite
#28I've been working on this exact idea, with sqlar as the "format specification". Works in the browser, and desktop + Android using Tauri.
https://github.com/JoshTheDerf/uapp
Demo apps and games: https://thederf.com/uapp/demo/
Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite
#29You can get a cheap approximation of this with chromium browsers + Filesystem API and a PWA manifest for that native-ish feel. AI has reignited my interest in building based 100% on browser native features. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...
If you want to distribute apps to many users this would probably be a better solution. The main benefit of Capsule is the personal document like app. You create a capsule, move it to an USB stick, save it in your cloud storage and it's still the same document. Nothing has changed, not the UI, not the data. The document will stay the same.
how is a filesystem supposed to prevent you from doing that?
Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite
#30This is great. Curious: this requires users to have a host app installed on their machine that can read .capsule file right? Won't that be a point of friction for distribution? Isn't html/css a better distribution mechanism as most computers already have the tech to run them?
That reminds me of TiddlyWiki[1], a wiki application in the form of a single self-contained HTML file.