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Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

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Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#81

Post by [deleted] »

Scarblac wrote: post #33
sojournerc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, how complex are _your_ systems? Simple table views are available through a number of database management software (dbeaver). What does django provide beyond that?

You can customize the admin so it only shows some tables, you can add actions that run things in the backend, the changes go through your Django models so they run validation etc. In short you really can give it to knowledgeable admins at customers to configure and admin applications with, in a way that you can't just let them edit database tables.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#82

Post by skydhash »

Chiron1991 wrote: post #75

The core reason is (imo) that it's simply not possible to provide a Django admin equivalent in other frameworks because they lack the functionality to do so. The basic dependencies for the Django admin are: - authentication - user permissions - forms - the ORM, to generate forms from model definitions and forward the admin's CRUD operations to the database No other framework comes with all of these dependencies built…

Laravel has the foundation for these baked in. And they provided a paid admin packages if you don’t want to implement the rest.

My opinion is that once you add a dependency to your project, you own it just like your own code. This means understanding it enough to know how it’s built, but for the time being, someone else is maintaining it. And that a donation every once in a while should be made if it’s a core part of your product.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#83

Post by michaelteter »

Scarblac wrote: post #33
sojournerc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, how complex are _your_ systems? Simple table views are available through a number of database management software (dbeaver). What does django provide beyond that?

You can customize the admin so it only shows some tables, you can add actions that run things in the backend, the changes go through your Django models so they run validation etc. In short you really can give it to knowledgeable admins at customers to configure and admin applications with, in a way that you can't just let them edit database tables.

This is kind of the point. Built in interfaces require tuning to fit a given situation. And the alternative is a starter/scaffold generated on demand and then extended, or just a fully custom built solution (which, if one’s design is good and the framework is good, is low effort).

As with all frameworks, the freebies usually have less value in real world situations than we imagine they would.

So choosing a framework based on the freebies is extra risky.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#84

Post by [deleted] »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #59
karaterobot wrote: post #29

I've been out of web development for about four years now, but I think Django is unusual in providing the admin dashboard for free. Most frameworks don't want to devote the resources to that when there are third-party options you can fairly easily (ha ha) bolt on to your project. Speculatively, it may be that Django comes from a time before such a wide variety of self-service solutions existed, and based on the newsp…

What third party options would you recommend? I'm aware of ReTool and Airplane.dev, but both of them feel like I'm a technician fighting an interface and not a software engineer writing functionality.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#85

Post by hdoan741 »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #66
mdasen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've kinda hit why systems like the Django Admin aren't more common. At some point you simply need to build custom code. I've seen engineers spend so much time futzing with the Django Admin trying to contort it to their use case when they could have just built their own form in a fraction of the time. I was going to question the "tremendous value of Django Admin", but I thought I shouldn't. I was going to s…

I think what you're calling mediocre is precisely the same thing I was calling tremendous - the fact it allows us to ship mediocre form inputs with complex programmatic validation and permissions without the need to touch a line of frontend is indeed pretty great. The use case is https://spotdx.com . We're a YC backed healthtech product with a significant amount of need for safe manual data entry and updates, and the…

> I wish there was a tool like ReTool that was tied to our regular backend and ORM.

Hi from Retool! I'm working on an exact solution for this problem. We're building a backend & ORM integration that will enable you to connect your ORM with Retool directly to build admin dash & flexible tools on top of it. It's beta but please let me know if you would like to give it a try!

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't Django Admin style dashboards popular in other frameworks?

#86

Post by hdoan741 »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #59
karaterobot wrote: post #29

I've been out of web development for about four years now, but I think Django is unusual in providing the admin dashboard for free. Most frameworks don't want to devote the resources to that when there are third-party options you can fairly easily (ha ha) bolt on to your project. Speculatively, it may be that Django comes from a time before such a wide variety of self-service solutions existed, and based on the newsp…

What third party options would you recommend? I'm aware of ReTool and Airplane.dev, but both of them feel like I'm a technician fighting an interface and not a software engineer writing functionality.

I'm from Retool and I agree with you a lot of things we can do better. IMO Retool is best as a simple way to build UI with drag-n-drop. For actual business logic, it should be left written in your own backend, and we can do better in connecting the two. We're working on a solution for this, which will allow you to connect Retool UI to your backend & ORM directly. LMK if you're interested in trying it out!
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