Stamplay: IFTTT for developers | Hacker News Reader

Stamplay: IFTTT for developers

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198 pointsNicoJuicy70 comments

As a Stamplay co-founder, since the thread is getting crowded of many HN users that know this space very well I think that this is the perfect place to share my vision on how programming will evolve

https://medium.com/@giuliano/programming-easier-better-faste...

Feedbacks are welcome!

I had to disable Ghostery and AdBlock to get your editor to load properly; I'd recommend taking a look at what resources you're depending on that they're blocking.

Hi Darren,

yes we are aware of the issue and already working to fix it. Thanks for telling us btw :)

Calling it "IFTTT for developers" is fairly misleading. This doesn't require any real coding or offer any flexiblity and is seemingly drag and drop, with some random backend API's and the ability for a developer to use these on the front end. It doesn't really do anything different than IFTTT for developers except generate endpoints from the things they define you can do. There isn't any customisation for the developer to do what they want to do and it's unclear if you can build your own integrations how you want to outside of what they deem important.

We're building an integration platform at http://hoistapps.com/ that is more accurately reflective of 'If This Then That For Developers' than this is, in a sense that you build the integration you want, using your own code, not off the box one-size fits all modules, then we host and scale your integrations for you (amongst other things).

It's IFTTT for the backend, so i suppose it's more developer related then something else (no offence)

This can solve the backend of many simple web apps. That leaves us with the space between Bootstrap and Stamplay. I guess that many customers would accept an interface made by standardized components if that means that they could pay ten times less. Is there any tool like that for the frontend, better if it can work in combination with Stamplay?

Yes there is http://www.froont.com! We having a major update coming very soon, this is a video sneak peek what to expect: http://vimeo.com/107843019

Loggur (https://www.loggur.com) launched a few days ago. It's still pretty rough around the edges but the core concept is to be able to use interchangeable parts to build web apps in real-time with other developers. It of course has the added benefit of being able to easily build real-time apps for users. It also eliminates the need for most backend work.

The $40 (25 GBP) upgrade to the Plus plan to be able to export any of my data really rubs me the wrong way. I thought we'd generally decided that was a bad way to make money...

Hi Chris,

ok this tell me that written like that, the features is very misleading. You can ALWAYS retrieve all the data via API on any plan. The data is yours.

The export one is just a commodity to have it formatted on an Excel or CVS file (good for non tech people or for those who dont want to integrate via API to collect data)

Does it makes sense?

Thanks for this comment!

By 'retrieve all the data' do you mean I'll have to write a script that goes through the API, iterates over things, and dumps it into a format I would like? Or is there a single 'dump' API endpoint that gives me all the data?

At this moment the first one you mentioned, but the second one is a good suggestion. writing it down now :)

I value my time at $125/hour. If this saves me 20 minutes it is a win. $40 is pocket change.

So this really depends on how quickly you can do the job :)

That's a $0.75 comment right there, folks.

Agreed...

would love to see an open source initiative in this space. Might even give it a go, anyone interested? Would love to host my own trigger / web hook service that i can use across applications.

hmm a quick google and i have discovered bipio[1]. Anyone else know of any?

[1]https://github.com/bipio-server/bipio

Here is a list of some alternatives for bipio, hoginn and IFTTT : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8329265 (posted recently)

https://github.com/cantino/huginn

This is really an open source alternative to IFTT. I don't see it as really in the same space as Stamplay.

Yep you're right, that one solve a very specific problem about monitoring resources. We want to empower people to build products in an easier and more efficient way :)

While I agree it doesn't solve the same problem, I think Huginn is far more general than just monitoring resources.

I have some alternatives for IFTTT and Huginn listed here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8329265

But it isn't the same as Stamplay though :)

We're currently building [something][1] in almost this exact space but with more flexibility to insert custom code and run on one's own metal. The majority of the resulting application will be [open source][2], once we're out there.

To pull our own description across, we're building a declarative, scalable, polyglot web framework.

wym == what you mean (is what you get)

[1]: http://wym.io/

[2]: https://github.com/wymframework

nice idea, but seriously get a designer. that landing page scared me away. sorry for being honest.

You're absolutely right that we need a designer (hell that landing page should itself be hosted on wym).

I intend to take some pointers from [here][1] when I'm too tired to be building. :)

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8380344 (Ask HN: As a busy founder, how to address a website best?)

https://factor.io/

Factor.io is open-source, there is a hosted version, and self-hosted Pro version.

http://docs.factor.io/

Those are the open-source docs. The project has been around for well over a year; however, it was open sourced only a couple months ago.

this looks amazing, and ruby based too! looking into it now!

Eve will be open source.

Tried to signup... it said I already had an account.

Did a password reset... it emailed me a new password in cleartext.

Clicked on the login link... Bad Gateway.

Hi binary,

I got your points. We had a short outage that has been restored in a flash. +90% of our users login with Google so password reset has been developed just to give users the possibility to re-enter and define a new one of their choice.

But does this mean you are storing passwords in cleartext?

That is not what he said, they send a mail with the new password, so that doesn't mean they store the passwords in plaintext (not cleartext).

It just generates a password, mails it and then (probably) encrypts it.

Ah, apologies. Misread.

Still could be better, though - with a reset link that then creates a new password.

Literally was just started using Divshot and Parse to solve the problem Stamplay is solving. Just tried it and very cool. Only suggestion is change the name. Extremely hard to remember (had to bookmark it so I didn't forget it) and easy to get confused with Stamply

Thanks frequentflyeru,

we're foreseeing that need that's why we're evaluating to build something like Divshot architect on our own (or with a partner already providing a similar service like Froont or Webflowapp)

Bootstrap + Wordpress + Stamplay - The commoditisation of the ordinary web developer begins ...

its been happening for a while... take a look at expression engine ecosystem.

Is there a JSON parsing component that I'm missing? I would think a simple JSON component would allow you to hook up any number of API's together to build an application. Assuming it's on your roadmap.

Composable Analytics is a similar solution, but users create the apps using a dataflow methodology (sexy apps). Allows for much more flexibility because you can change the guts of the data processing. It's also very performant because parts of the app can be parallelized.

http://composableanalytics.com

"There is no real direct competitor at this time..." perhaps you failed to run some checks on these guys: zapier.com?

As one of the partner of Stamplay, we actually wrote an in depth tutorial about Stamplay. If you curious to see how easy it is to use, you can read the tutorial of Stamplay & Pusher on our blog.

http://blog.pusher.com/integrating-pusher-stamplay/

I gave it a quick look, and it does seem interesting. A good addition to the "IFTTT for [category]" crop that is popping up like mushrooms lately.

One small nitpick: When you add components, it's not very clear which are usable as triggers and which as actions. Some indication of that would be nice.

Hi Chton,

thanks for the feedback. You can click on the "i" that appears when you move your mouse over a component to get this modal view with the usable triggers and actions. http://imgur.com/EdGf9Hz

Otherwise you can click the info button on the upper right corner of settings view of every component http://imgur.com/UpAcLdk

Cheers

aha that is a big help, I probably should have searched around more before complaining. Thanks, and good luck with your platform!

One of the mushrooms is Node Red (http://nodered.org) which you can install on you own machines if you don't like hosted services.

Node Red is free and open source and can be combined with the Freeboard dashboard frontend. Give it a shot with Vagrant: https://github.com/jsilence/vagrant-nodered-freeboard

Thanks for the info. I know about node-RED, since it's a company in the same space and with some of the same intentions as my own. Gotta know your friendly neighbourhood competitors :)

I've been using Node Red for a little bit now, and Freeboard looks sweet, but what does Vagrant do here?

Vagrant is there for people who would like to give the Node Red / Freeboard combo a quick shot without the installation and configuration hustle. Convenience.

dweet.io, the pub/sub service from BugLabs now has alerts, which means you can fashion conditional triggers. Still in beta though.

Hi Nico,

thanks for sharing this, as a co-founder, I'm here available to answer to every question :)

I found the project very intresting to follow up (now and in the future).. And since i use HackerNews as my bookmarking service StamPlay just needed to be here ;)

thumbs up!!;)

Hi, Great service! How to add a new component ?

Do you mean new custom components? I was also asking that question to me. I noticed a "Want More?" box in the bottom right corner of the component list: "Tell us which service you would like to have."

I've just submited a message, thanks :)

Btw if you need anything special you can always email me at giuliano dot iacobelli at stamplay.com

When I use Stamplay, does it mean they get access to all the data my customers enter into those forms?

If so, no thank you, even if the engineering team is in Italy.

Hi Tepix,

thanks for the assessment but it doesn't really means that. We're in the middle of integrating a RBAC logic on the resources while before it was all about setting something as private/public. Since you pointed out the issue I'd like to know more about how you would use such functionality: - explicitly declare if entries can be private/public - define if users can fetch entries that they own/made - any more fine grained logic?

Hi, Great service, love it! How to add a new component to your collection ?

Hi Amzil, we're rolling out a developer program but at its fist stage it will be only to add (and sell) App Templates. Components are still on us but we will open that too.

On Stamplay pricing: whenever I see pricing in pounds not dollars on a service like this, I think they are not quite ready for my business. My IP address (pretty) clearly identifies me as a U.S. customer, why not present the pricing page in US dollars?

I'm willing to admit this could be a failing in me, not the website.

If I rejected every company that didn't geolocate pricing into GBP then I'd be able to use very few developer focused products ;)

Yep - you are emphasizing my point. The default seems to be USD.

Pick a sensible default - if you get more business from the US just show dollars. Or do some simple A/B testing and see if you get better conversions with one versus the other.

> Pick a sensible default - if you get more business from the US just show dollars. Or do some simple A/B testing and see if you get better conversions with one versus the other.

Maybe they did this, and get more business from the UK?

I'm not affiliated with Stamplay, but I feel a little compelled to raise a point in their defense. Internationalization is not a trivial affair, especially when it comes to money and handling different currencies, taxation situations, trade agreements, VAT, et cetera.

How do you think other businesses feel when they visit a SF startup's page and see pricing in dollars instead of their local currency?

> My IP address (pretty) clearly identifies me as a U.S. customer, why not present the pricing page in US dollars?

How many countries should they be required to do this for, and how frequently should they rebalance the exchange rates?

how do you know that the companies that you trust so much because they presented you the price in US aren't just giving everyone the price in US because they are based there and not using any localization?

Hi strick,

here you can switch pricing between plans and currencies https://www.stamplay.com/pricing

currently it's not an automated thing based on visitor's IP since the infos are all there. But I understand that into the product this could be not that nice to see.

Thanks for pointing this out

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