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Comment by alin23 | Hacker News Reader

I also have an iOS published app that has a Google Sheets “backend”: https://subsol.one

It’s an app for finding parties and festivals in Romania, and the sheets choice makes it super easy for my brother and his friends to add parties to the app.

I thought about adding a “real” database and tried some apps/frontends for them, but nothing made it easy enough to update and insert rows for non technical people.

I figured I could just download and cache the Sheets CSV, and use that for the database.

PS: the app is the one I had trouble getting published because the App Store reviewers deemed it“too simple”: https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/Dealing-with-App-Store-reject...

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For your next app backend, you should try SQLPage [1][2]

It makes creating a small web form to feed your database as easy as

    SELECT 'form' AS component;
    SELECT name, label, type FROM form_fields;

    INSERT INTO parties(name, date) VALUES(:name, :date);

And creating an api on top of that db as simple as:

    SELECT 'json' AS component, 
      (SELECT JSON_GROUP_ARRAY(JSON_OBJECT('name', name, 'date', date)) FROM parties) AS contents;

[1] https://sql.ophir.dev/ [2] https://github.com/lovasoa/SQLPage

I like the idea of this a lot, but does it provide any way to edit the data?

You write the SQL yourself, so you can do anything you want, including

   UPDATE parties SET name=:name, date=:date WHERE id=:id;

I can’t tell if that’s a sarcasm or “dropbox is just ftp” level of professional deformation.

I'm not sure I understand this comment. The parent asked whether SQLPage could be used to update data in the database after inserting it. I answered that yes, it could.

The update form would look something like this:

    select 'form' as component;
    select 'event_name' as name,
        (select name from events where id=$id) as value;
    select 'event_date' as name, 'date' as type,
        (select date from events where id=$id) as value;
    select 'event_id' as name, $id as value, 'hidden' as type;

and the page processing the form would look like this:

    update events set name=:event_name, date=:event_date where id=:event_id;

If what you are saying is that it's more complicated than a google sheet, then yes, there's no denying that. But it's also an order of magnitude less complicated than traditional web tech, and the result is a real website, not a google sheet.

It's a little bit more complicated to set up than a google sheet, but it's less complicated to use afterwards.

I didn’t realize it’s your project, so probably it hit personal, which wasn’t my intent. And I should have posted under the first comment to avoid making it even more confusing.

So I beg your pardon.

But what it really meant is that this sort of a technical solution may appeal to a developer, but not to regular users, not the ones who just updated spreadsheets for their website yesterday. Looking from that “mere mortal” point of view, and when it’s suggested by a person who isn’t yet known to be an author, in that context it feels like a 50% sarcasm and 50% our common geek stereotypes. I understand what SQLPage provides for a technical person, so please treat my comment as a joke which it is.

Thanks for the response, I was looking at your site from mobile earlier and it didn't jump out at me that it could also be used to edit data (tho I now see it mentioned clearly). Might be worth calling it out in a section as easy editing.

Btw how would you compare this to https://datasette.io/ which is the first thing that came to mind? Is yours a bit more developer oriented?

Hey, that's a good question, and the tools do have some overlap. Here is my (totally biased) comparison:

- datasette builds one single website and API, which you cannot customize, on top of a SQLite database. It is a little bit ugly, but very efficient to help you discover your own dataset, and make some quick data analysis. If you're concerned about restricting public access to your database, sharing it may not be ideal.

- SQLPage does not build anything for you by default. You need to write at least two or three SQL queries to make a useful website on top of your database. This requires you to already know the schema of the data you are working with. But this allows you to build visualisations of your data that look the way you want. While Datasette mainly offers tables, SQLPage provides forms, graphs, lists, tables, data cards, and more. The results tend to have a more polished and professional appearance, and your database remains private. Only the (parameterized) queries you create yourself can be executed by website visitors.

Furthermore, a significant distinction is that Datasette exclusively works with SQLite, while SQLPage can connect to SQLite, Postgres, MySQL, or SQL Server databases.

I haven't quite had a chance to set it up and play with it yet but one thing that I think is missing is that there is no clear way to write to it via api. I know it's not exactly the main purpose but I'd really like to be able to shoot data over from wherever and then let my friends/family easily see and edit it in the GUI.

Anyway it's a great looking tool and wishing you the best with it!

Thanks for building this, and for the sample code :)

Although what sheets excels at is batch editing and collaboration, which is really hard to get in an SQL frontend. My brother usually runs a Raycast workflow I wrote for him to extract a small number of party data as TSV which gets copied in clipboard. Then in sheets he can just paste that to get full rows and columns populated.

After that he and his friends start proof reading and cross referencing social media data for each row, and Sheets makes this super easy as they can see each row highlighted with each user’s color so they don’t step on each other’s toes.

Your solution is still very good for other use cases and I think I already have one in mind. My father always wanted to maintain a list of up-to-date prices for the vegetables that sell in my hometown’s large wholesale market.

Django provides an admin page that makes it easy for non programmers to update SQL tables so thats worth looking into as well

> Although what sheets excels at

well played

This looks really good, but I had to pass on it because I couldn't find screenshots or, even better, a demo site. I think that would really help sell this.

The official website for SQLPage (https://sql.ophir.dev/) is written in SQLPage.

The sql source code for it is here: https://github.com/lovasoa/SQLpage/tree/main/examples/offici...

The site also links to this little collaborative game written in SQLPage: https://conundrum.ophir.dev/

The github README has code snippets and associated screenshots: https://github.com/lovasoa/SQLpage#examples

There is also an official repl.it that you can fork to quickly try it online without having to download anything: https://replit.com/@pimaj62145/SQLPage

And SQLPage cloud is coming: https://sql.ophir.dev/your-first-sql-website/hosted.sql

This is all good, but you're making a mistake I see many people make: If one person has this experience/questions (me), then many of your other visitors will. Answering here will answer my questions, but it won't answer everyone else's questions.

My recommendation would be to have a clear "see a demo" button, which leads to a website that showcases the most common elements I might want to have on such a page (a form, some graphs, etc), maybe with source code close by.

I agree. I was looking for the same thing.

They’re not easy to create but side by side code/result demos like the ones I saw on https://imba.io/ make it very clear on what I’ll be getting into as a developer.

You are right. I'll update the website !

Websites or apps backed by a sheet or some other minimalist setup are fairly common. What's noteworthy about the submission is that the website is a sheet, not a layer to render info from one.

You can easily turn a spreadsheet into a small CRUD database with HTTP API using Google Apps Script. I've shared an example a few years ago: https://spreadapi.roombelt.com/setup.

How's the performance?

Good enough

Sameish here. I made hundreds of flashcards and other "matrixes" of data, this is pulled each time I build the app, which then converts the csv to json and stored in the app.

I also write articles in Sketch, because the app is heavy on illustrations. Using sketch allows me to draw the images directly while writing the articles. It is then sliced and exported into the app through a custom plugin.

I love your website. The design and aesthetics is so pleasing.

I made something very similar for our company's internal directory. HR is used to maintaining Google Sheets and fit really well into their workflow

Your choice is a reasonable one! I have built entire CMS systems that pull data for thousands of users from sharepoint spreadsheets.

Realtors and doctors, mostly.

Take a look at SeaTable.

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