Hacker News Reader

Comment by kall | Hacker News Reader

If you deploy to app stores you have a slow deployment process and there is not much you can do about it.

Oh yea, mobile apps are totally a great use case. But honestly I would probably just toss a quick route for `/config` in my backend server that returns my config JSON for the app--and then boom we're back to having version controlled configs in my git repos. And obviously, make sure in the app to cache the last version incase there's no internet connection, unless maybe the app requires an internet connection.

Makes sense and you could definitely do that.

I could be wrong, but I think some folks would want their other clients -- even their server -- retrieving that value from that one single source. So when you roll an Android app, you'd also want to implement HTTP + caching... And basically you're on the path to building your own Configly.

It’s really not so hard to roll yourself IF you don’t need a web interface.

In my GraphQL api I have a resolver called appConfig. That enables me to fetch the config I need for a screen in the same request as the data and to reuse any caching/offline/http logic the app already has. Zero added latency. No service can beat that, but then it‘s also just me editing postgres to change the config.

I think even if you do need a web interface, there are enough plug and play tools that will give you something that works reasonably well. That isn't to say that a service like Config.ly couldn't do a much better job.

I’m just saying that if a non-developer needs to config something, they for sure would like to have a web interface.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com