Appwrite: A New Open-Source Back End Server for Mobile and Web Developers | Hacker News Reader

Appwrite: A New Open-Source Back End Server for Mobile and Web Developers

medium.com

93 pointseldad_fux13 comments

Looks real slick! I started playing around with Base (no affiliation, found it via HN a couple of weeks ago) and it's nice to have something easy to integrate with for common stuff like user management etc., but the offline dev story there is lacking. Nice to see Appwrite provides a containerized solution for that, should make distributed dev (and testing!) a lot easier. I'm gonna set aside some time today to play with this, thanks for sharing!

License looks good too: https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/blob/master/LICENSE

Reminds me a lot of Directus, another headless (PHP) REST API back-end that has an admin UI included.

Except for e2e encryption - which is a very nice touch - how is appwrite different?

Directus looks like a headless CMS (similar to Contentful). This is more AWS AppSync or Google Firebase.

100%

What are the backends for storage and database and how easy would it be to change or scale ? A quick search didn’t lead to any architecture information or tech stack details

Looks like MySQL only: https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/blob/master/app/db/SQL/...

And it uses the PHP Utopia MVC framework.

I think most people who want to use this should have scale at the bottom of their priority list. I look at this as more a tool to cut time to market. Getting your product to actual users is the most important thing when your'e starting out.

demarq, I agree with you in 100% and would only add that Appwrite was designed for scale. But as you mentioned, Appwrite out-of-the-box setup should be more than enough for any product at the start of its way.

Hi, I just discovered this yesterday and wanted to say thank you! It's exactly what I was looking for.

I'd like to concur with the other commenters here: it would be great to have some more information about the architectural choices (especially the database... and how to backup or connect this with other data sources?), as well as who's behind the project & its roadmap.

Hi Vekker, In a nutshell, I can say that Appwrite was designed for scale. It uses common MariaDB and Redis containers as storage engines and should support basic clustering out of the box, no hidden magic.

Same goes for backups. All you need is to backup the MariaDB databases and the Appwrite storage folder, just like you would with any basic app architecture. We took great length to have the most simple setup possible.

I do plan to release some tutorials covering our architecture and design decision. In the meantime, you can check our stack on StackShare (https://stackshare.io/appwrite/appwrite) and learn more about how we generate docs and SDKs (https://medium.com/@eldadfux/how-we-integrated-our-docs-and-...).

Any information on the team size or future funding ?

Watching an independent project take off is inspiring. But back-end infra structure really needs longevity. (yes, it is OSS and thats great, but not sufficient)

Agreed. Hard to change later.

The project is currently only driven by the community, we have yet to raise any funding.

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