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Comment by tuyguntn | Hacker News Reader

sorry to steal topic a little bit. I am a backend engineer and usually create an API stuff for our frontend engineers. Tried to work on my side project recently and pixel perfecting front end and adjusting it to mobile seems very time consuming task.

Are there any services I can use as a drag and drop front end builder and connect data population to my backend? checked out wix and webflow, they both seem to require storing data on their side and most of tutorials are showing how to populate that datastore with airtable or zapier, which is not an option for me.

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Hey, I run Nocode.tech and can probably give some advice here - No perfect answer sadly but a few to try

First, Worth noting you can export Webflow as code and rehost it wherever you like if that’s helpful. BusyWorkHQ hasn’t launched yet I don’t believe, but it’s a backend builder for Webflow and may help you solve your problem by letting you connect a database/api thru to Webflow. @PatrickStolc on Twitter is building it

Have a look at Adalo - They have the ability to replace their backend with an external database (it’s a little bit tucked away but it’s there). The downside is that the front end parts aren’t as freeform as Webflow. They’re more focused on mobile but support web apps too

You may also be interested in React Studio, Wappler or UIBakery

Hey, thanks!

> you can export Webflow as code and rehost it wherever you like if that’s helpful.

this sounds good starting point for me, I am guessing in this case I need to render HTML on server side or add some additional code to exported source code to be able to render data front end on browser side.

Other options also seem interesting, thank you!

Yeah, you would need to use something like Pug.js to render the data.

As an alternative (and possibly easier imo), you could add custom JS code on Webflow (it has an embed function) to hook onto its dynamic list functionality and add your own data inside.

In other words, create a list on Webflow with one item in it designed the way you want the final data to look. Then use JS code to override the data on that page with your own data source and to duplicate the list item as many times as you need for your data source

This may be a useful reference: https://cmsdocs.webflow.io/

Finally, I’ve not looked at this much but it may help: https://www.nocode.tech/lessons/building-user-authentication...

Retool

https://retool.com/

Edit: not really usable for anything customer centric, which on a re-read of your comment seems to be what you're going for.

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