Show HN: One Adaptive API for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: One Adaptive API for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive

cloud-rail.com

71 pointscloudrail43 comments

A little less "we are changing the world", a little more "we offer a JavaScript SDK for file storage accross many services".

That's the short version. I initially wrote a long comment with a list of things I don't like, but I decided I was being too harsh so I removed it. If you're still interested, I can mail it to you.

Yes, we have a vision. What you see today is the first little step into this direction. The goal is to release more SDKs and gateways besides cloud storage. Of course, we are very interested in your feedback. Please mail it to info@cloudrail.com. Thanks

Great idea.

We (JotForm) spend so much time implementing and maintaining integration with these services.

You definitely need pricing information. If you want to keep it free at the beginning you can say something like "we are free until 2016", but many people might avoid using you because there is no information on how much it will cost when you go out of beta.

Thanks for the feedback. I already added some basic pricing information on the product page. We'll update it after the end of beta.

Please also consider adding cloudrail integration to JotForm. We do have a self implementation API: http://developers.jotform.com/integrations/

Then we can tell people to use you when they request say "OneDrive" or any other cloud storage service you will add in the future.

Sure. Can you please send me a quick note to info@cloudrail.com? One of our developers will then get in touch with you asap. Thanks

Very cool. There's definitely demand for a unified cloud storage API. Kloudless (https://kloudless.com) provides one as well, with some open-source UI tools. Disclaimer: co-founder here.

I'd suggest making the docs more easily accessible for developers looking to get a better understanding of CloudRail. In addition, the link/magnify icons on the cloud storage logos on the product page seem unnecessary, since the logos could just link to their individual pages.

Looks neat! This sounds very similar to the concept of unhosted.org[1], where the user provides their own data storage location. Being based in Europe, have you had any interaction with the unhosted team or their remoteStorage.js[2] library? It seems like they are trying to integrate in Dropbox/GoogleDrive into that library, too.

Also, you mention encryption in the Example Applications section. I've been working on a similar concept of having a client-side javascript library that creates an encrypted filesystem on Dropbox/Google Drive, called Bring Your Own Filesystem[3]. The most interesting thing with the system is that these storage locations allow for public files, which means you can set up end-to-end encrypted communication between two Dropbox accounts[4]. I'd love to learn more about your implementation of the encryption layer and how you plan to develop that further. What plans do you have for privacy/encryption?

[1] - https://unhosted.org/

[2] - https://github.com/remotestorage/remotestorage.js

[3] - https://github.com/diafygi/byoFS

[4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTPimUSIWbI

I've been using a similar system on my own machines, by combining Dropbox with a userspace encrypted filesystem (encfs).

In case you use an Android device, I wrote an app to use encfs on Dropbox/GoogleDrive:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mrpdaemon....

Sounds super interesting. We don't plan to integrate any encryption into the SDK. That's a task for forward thinking developers as you ;) Just take our solution for the cloud storage integration and add your security layer behind it. I bet that would be an awesome product and we'd love to feature it on our website if you like.

Good idea!

And a small feedback;

- Please fix your scrolling on the page. It is not a pleasing scrolling experience.

- Slider interval is quick, kind of disturbs while reading, do not auto-slide at all maybe.

Edit: Sorry for not going into detail about scrolling.

I am using Chrome on Mac OS, and when i try to scroll on the main page, whoops!, I am at the end of the page, it feels like scrolling sensitivity is too high and i need to tap it once more to stop scrolling. It may give different experience with a mouse maybe but using touchpad gave me this experience.

For the sake of the OP can you go into more detail about the bad scrolling experience? The scrolling is fine for me - so I'm guessing it is fine for him/her as well.

In general I hate when sites modify default scrolling behavior - and that absolutely is not pleasant, but I didn't notice that here.

Not thread-parent, but it has somehow drastically modified my scrolling speed. I immediately and jarringly ended up at the bottom of the page. Two-finger scrolling on a Macbook Pro, this is.

I'm using a mouse and I had the same experience as parent. I had to like barely move the scroll wheel in order to not scroll all the way down to the bottom.

Thanks. A lot people mentioned that today. We'll fix that soon.

A friend of mine is on the team for Kloudless (https://developers.kloudless.com/). I haven't actually used it, but the marketing material tells of the same value prop as your project. Have any quick summary of the differences?

As I understand it, Kloudless uses a middleware to convert the data. So data flows from your app trough the Kloudless cloud to e.g. Dropbox. Means that you really have to trust them. We are doing all the conversion in the client. No data ever flows via our servers and no third party can read your transferred files ;)

(Kloudless Co-founder here)

Congrats on the beta release! I'd suggest making the docs available without having to sign up.

I noticed the docs indicate unsupported features for each service, such as creating Dropbox links and downloading OneDrive files. A benefit to managing the integration is that you would be able to provide full functionality for all the APIs you support. This is one of the primary reasons we chose to adopt the architecture we currently have in place.

This would also let you fill in missing features such as Event Notifications and Search even if the underlying storage service doesn't provide it. For example, we support event notifications for SharePoint.

A side-effect of this is that developers would not have to worry about OAuth tokens expiring or having to be refreshed, since token management is handled for them. UI tools such as authenticator widgets and file explorers ( https://github.com/kloudless/file-explorer ) can also be integrated pretty easily since authentication is managed.

As you pointed out, client-side solutions provide additional security guarantees. This is one of the reasons our enterprise plan features an on-premise version of Kloudless.

I'm excited to see more development in this space, and looking forward to your launch!

Open for any feedback you might have ;)

where is the pricing?

We're in free Beta. But cloud storage will be free forever.

Feedback: It's kind of hard to understand this statement. Your product is basically a client-side API that allows my application to use your API to integrate with a third-party storage service. So "cloud storage will be free forever" means your API is free to use forever for someone else's cloud storage? Presumably you make the code available to the customer to use and then restrict usage/distribution with a license?

Our service for developers is to offer them a single API to access "all" cloud storage providers. We care about the conversion and keeping the integrations up-to-date. We're offering this service for free. Other integrations besides cloud storage might cost something. Will try to make that clear in the description.

Please do not mess around with my scrolling when I visit your website. It means my first experience is horrible.

I bet you are on mobile? Yes, the experience is horrible on small screens so far. We will work on that. Thanks for the feedback.

Actually I'm using a Macbook Pro. The problem with messing with scrolling is that my usual flick of the trackpad does not get me to the point that I expected to reach on the page. It's very mildly disorientating.

I was going to scroll down to the next section on your page anyway, so there doesn't appear to be any benefit in dictating exactly where I scroll to. Unless you have a very specific reason for overriding the scroll behaviour (eg. an interactive story), it's best to steer clear of it.

Understood. Sorry for that. We are a small startup and the website was not our #1 focus. We'll try to improve it asap.

As the OP said, it's not just mobile that's an issue. I'm also on MacBook air and it's annoying.

Why scrolljack in the first place? There's a reason why every "Show HN" with scrolljacking gets this complaint, and it's because it's extremely annoying. It literally adds nothing to your experience.

(Great idea though, I actually had a similar one myself. I think it's a very nice business model!)

Thanks for the feedback. We'll fix that asap. We focused on building a great product so far and didn't spend much time for the website.

As you should be. Good luck! :)

I'm a little confused - it's an auto-updating JS library with a price tag? Is the end-to-end encryption done in JS? Is it OSS, or is the source minified and obfuscated?

It's a JS SDK which can be included in your software. This SDK can download special definitions to adapt to e.g. the Dropbox API. E2E encryption depends on the provider. It should just express, that we have no middleware in between. So data flows P2P between you and the e.g. Dropbox and can be easily encrypted.

P2P is a very bad choice of words for what you want to communicate.

You have to say something like "Your data will not pass through CloudRail".

That's better, thanks.

Not sure if he meant P2P as peer-to-peer or point-to-point. The latter seems to make more sense. But P2P is most commonly used to mean "peer to peer". (also pay-to-play in the games space)

I don't see how it can be a JS SDK, taking file inputs via the browser, and do end-to-end encryption in anything but JS. It's just not possible, no?

The JS SDK just downloads microcode (definitions) to "implement" e.g. the "Dropbox API" in your client. If Dropbox supports ssl encryption between you and their server, data is encrypted. This should just express, that your data is not decrypted in a third party middleware to make the conversion. The description is misleading, already changed it.

But we'll try to make that clear in the description.

So looking at [this license](http://developer.cloudrail.com/license), am I to understand that the cloudrail client source js is licensed with GPLv2?

Good idea. Where is the pricing information? For some reason if you cannot create a sustainable business will you open source it? Good luck with your endeavor.

This is pretty great. It would be nice to see support for OneDrive for Business (Office 365) as well.

Your fontawesome icons are displaying as boxes. Looks like a CORS issue.

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