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Form to DB
- interlocutor 3y agoThis does a better job: https://visualdb.com/ https://visualdb.com/
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y agoThere's also https://www.airsequel.com/ https://www.airsequel.com/ And https://airforms.com/ https://airforms.com/
- throwaway-42808 3y agohttps://airforms.com/ https://airforms.com/ and https://visualdb.com/ https://visualdb.com/ appear to be the same thing?
- breadwinner 3y agoAirforms is self-hosted
- interlocutor 3y agoAlso, Visual DB has Airtable-like features
- bieberChen 3y agoI build a better one https://teable.io/ https://teable.io/ and plan to open source it next week
- nathanstitt 3y agoteable looks very interesting, I hope you do follow through on open sourcing it.
- raphinou 3y agoI'll share my own project: https://www.myowndb.com/ https://www.myowndb.com/, running since 2006. I neglected the project for a couple of years but recently launched the new version. It's open source: https://gitlab.com/myowndb/myowndb https://gitlab.com/myowndb/myowndb I enjoy the technical side, but I'm struggling to commercialise it so don't hesitate to give me your feedback here or on https://www.myowndb.com/contact.html https://www.myowndb.com/contact.html which is of course powered by a myowndb public form :-)
- nathanstitt 3y agoheh, I'll throw my formial (https://github.com/nathanstitt/formial https://github.com/nathanstitt/formial) project onto this thread. I probably need to update it a bit but it's been working well in production for 2+ years now. Where were all these alternatives when I was looking for a WYSIWYG form builder?
- mceoin 3y agoStrange the URL for this isn’t retool.com/formtodb
- pryelluw 3y agoWould be nice if there was some kind of demo or docs. Like this is basic landing page stuff at this point.
- cuffe 3y agoHere are the docs: https://docs.retool.com/apps/forms https://docs.retool.com/apps/forms. Just added a link to them from the landing page. Agree we should also add a quick demo to the landing page
- james-bcn 3y agoAnd pricing! When this kind of service doesn't make its pricing clear it immediately puts me off.
- cuffe 3y agoRetool Forms is completely free. No arbitrary limits on the number of users, forms or submissions. I'll make this clearer on the landing page. For building Retool Apps/Workflows, our pricing is here: https://retool.com/pricing https://retool.com/pricing
- willsmith72 3y agocool idea, i'm always curious about the customer logo sections. i assume for amazon, mercedes, etc. it's talking about retool? or are there some employees using formtodb?
- cuffe 3y agoHi all, engineer who worked on forms @ Retool here. Excited to get HN’s feedback on a new product I’ve been working on: Retool Forms. There are a ton of form builders out there (e.g. Typeform, Google Forms, Airtable Forms, etc.) and honestly we weren’t really looking to build another one. But as a developer, I wanted my data in my database, not in another SaaS app (which probably has a shoddy API, like every example I listed above). Surprisingly, the only way to build a form on top of my database was by a) building my own backend (probably via node), and b) building my own frontend (probably via React, and then maybe via formik). There was no “one click” form-on-top-of-my-database tool available. So we decided to build a form builder. It allows you to: 1. Send data directly to your database (Postgres in our case), your data warehouse, or wherever else you want it 2. Write JS almost anywhere on the front-end, including libraries like moment and lodash, for custom validations, conditional logic, and data parsing 3. Run any arbitrary code in form submission (or validation), via our Workflows product 4. Store it in our database (where we give you a connection string), or your own database 5. Self-host it in your own VPC And it’s free with no arbitrary limits on the number of users, forms or submissions. I’m hoping to ship a bunch more features like integration to any REST API, more styling options, etc. If you have any feedback please let me know!
- mrcwinn 3y agoSo, you didn’t feel comfortable relying on “another SaaS” app, and then go on to suggest Retool Workflows, which is itself part of another paid SaaS app? All those “shoddy” alternatives also have free tiers.
- quickthrower2 3y agoNot sure that is fair? The difference seems to be the data is squarely in your own DB. You can use their SaaS for validation. You might pay for something (surprise?).
- hk__2 3y agoSo exactly like Budibase, but closed-source?
- nextworddev 3y agoAs a side note I found retool to be the most prohibitively expensive out of 6-7 solutions I was researching for “low code admin app builder” ecosystem.
- kinj28 3y agoCurious - what was your use case for low code tool? Just build a single admin tool for a few users or something more elaborate. FWIW I run growth for a low code platform company and we are one of the retool alternatives. One of the things I am trying to get right is getting the value proposition right for different scenarios like say building a customer portal (unlimited external users) to admin tools (few internal users). So far we have been able to do good on this front by helping customers with usage based pricing or even developer based pricing. But yet curious to hear your use case and see if there is something I am missing.
- nextworddev 3y agoIt’s a progression. It starts out as an admin dashboard for a team of 5, then it grows to an internal platform for 15 devs plus “ops” people etc. Thus there’s micro segments inside this market based on stage
- kinj28 3y agoInteresting. Would love to chat if you got 15 and see if app based pricing works better or pure usage. Email is in profile.
- dvdhsu 3y agoHm, sorry you found us to be expensive. Two notes: * Forms (ie the product here) is free. * We’ve always aimed to build a sustainable business where we charge reasonable prices and can guarantee we’ll stay in business ourselves. It’s true there are other products that are cheaper, but every single one of those companies is unprofitable and many will probably be dead in a few years. See, for example, Airplane, Interval, or Dynaboard. Dynaboard just got acquired today (their founder is apparently “thrilled” about it: https://dynaboard.com/blog/figma-acquires-dynaboard https://dynaboard.com/blog/figma-acquires-dynaboard) and they’re shutting down on April 30th. If you’re a paying customer you’ll need to rebuild all your apps by then. Ouch! (I’d rather pay more and not have worry about core pieces of my business getting shut down with three months’ notice.)
- quickthrower2 3y agoSo Oracle forms, but with UX/DX :-)
- abrookewood 3y agoDon't underestimate how important that is. I can tell an Oracle web app a mile away and I immediately now it is going to be an absolute pain to use: UI components too small/big; standard form controls missing; horrible lag etc
- ako 3y agoOracle forms 3 on a terminal was actually a super nice tool: very fast way to edit database data, but you have to know all the keyboard shortcuts. Bit like Vi for database forms.
- Borealid 3y agoI remember Microsoft InfoPath, for which this appears to be a competitor. I never really understood why InfoPath didn't catch on better.
- pianoben 3y agoOh my goodness, what a blast from the past! Didn't you have to define forms using XML and XSLT? If I recall right, you had to host it either in SharePoint or InfoPath forms server. Don't get me wrong, it was an amazing tool for its day, but had some steep and proprietary onramps that limited adoption. I'm personally not at all surprised that it faded from general consciousness.
- Borealid 3y agoYou (usually) built forms using the graphical form editor, and they could be packaged as an executable desktop application that emailed you results back. If you wanted them to be in a browser they had to be on SharePoint, of course, because it's the usual Microsoft lock-in thing. It was surprisingly good at letting non-computer-people build data gathering applications though.
- zokier 3y agoDid InfoPath have any other workflow/automation/integration things available besides BizTalk (which is the one thing I saw InfoPath with)? Because if not, then it's no surprise that it didn't catch on.
- Borealid 3y agoI remember it inserting rows straight into an Access or arbitrary-SQL database, and the integrations running from there. It was a data collection tool.
- trollbridge 3y agoBack in 2009, I ran a project to convert a bunch of paper forms into InfoPath for online forms. After a few months we gave up on InfoPath: - We still had to have paper forms for legally required forms in case someone didn’t have a computer, etc. so then we needed a regular printable PDF. InfoPath native forms had issues with printing. - The InfoPath-PDF integration was not very good and not usable for my production. - The data on the other end went into bizarre formats and thus needed a job to convert it to the format we needed (and take action). In the end this solution was deployed, and shockingly is still online and in production in 15 years later: - A graphic designer (often an intern) took the original paper forms or fillable PDFs and made basic HTML forms with them. - jQuery used for user friendly form validation. - These forms were integrated with an SSO to allow e-signing. - “Print” and “Submit” buttons on the form invoked a Perl script which (1) transformed the HTML form to having the content filled in, (2) ran headless Firefox and print-to-PDF to archive the form for legal purposes, (3) stored the form values in the native database, and (4) fired off a stored procedure based on the form name. In effect, the same things InfoPath was supposed to do, but it didn’t need a dedicated administrator or complex integrations.
- revskill 3y agoForm to db is simple task, the hard part is the table.
- cuffe 3y agoAgree, the table is the component we’ve spent the most time building: https://retool.com/components/table-new https://retool.com/components/table-new
- Temporary_31337 3y agoThis links to the legacy table component. Which should I use for new projects? I assume the new one?
- cuffe 3y agoSorry just updated!
- revskill 3y agoI'm curious what's the generated sql for the table with grouped rows ?
- alexi-c 3y agohello! engineer who worked on the new Table component here. the grouping actually happens client side, so there's no generated sql. it's compatible with any data you bring into Retool, and is configured by simply selecting one or more columns in the Table you'd like you group the rows by.
- 1propionyl 3y agoOkay but what about the reply to that form?
- account-5 3y agoThese types of projects always remind me of MS Access. Access is forms on a database, and really easy to use. It obviously has its drawbacks but nothing has come close to it. I've never understood why MS didn't capitalise on it by extending and improving it.
- CGamesPlay 3y agoBecause the single-system paradigm doesn't work any more. However, modern replacements do exist, Airtable is one of the first; it's basically the notion of a "spreadsheet with more structure", and then building forms and such on top of that. I've recently been playing with Grist and like it, although it is rough around the edges. https://www.getgrist.com https://www.getgrist.com
- keybits 3y agoI love Grist, and relevant to this discussion, it now has forms: https://www.getgrist.com/forms/ https://www.getgrist.com/forms/ Grist is open source, Python scriptable and each project is stored in a SQLite database.
- datadrivenangel 3y agoAirtable also has a surprisingly small hard row limit. 50k rows is very easy to hit quickly.
- breadwinner 3y agoIf you want Airtable, but with unlimited rows in the DB, that's Visual DB: https://visualdb.com https://visualdb.com You can use query parameters to specify which subset of records to bring to the frontend.
- TheFragenTaken 3y agoI'd love a modern non-SaaS MS Access equivalent, that just use files: https://stephango.com/file-over-app https://stephango.com/file-over-app
- 3y ago
- mbix77 3y agoCrazy prices. I'm always wondering for what kind of companies things like Retool are. Internally, when we want to whip up a crud app, we use Nextjs with T3 stack and you are up and running in two-three hours.
- foxbee 3y agoOr... An open-source alternative https://budibase.com/forms https://budibase.com/forms
- dustedcodes 3y agoI am a little confused by Retool. Every page on retool.com has a different look and feel, different font styles and colour schemes. It feels extremely disjointed and almost like hacked together by completely different people who then merged html pages into a single web app. Then Form to DB has even its own domain and is marketed as a complete standalone product here but I can't find a way to only sign up to it or find pricing for it. How is From to DB related to Retool?
- TheFragenTaken 3y agoDon't most orgs already own Google Workspace, or MS365? I fail to see how MS Forms + Excel, or Google Forms + Sheets can't accomplish this (with the addition of common spreadsheet features). It's not to be snarky, but it feels like an easy comparison to make.
- Takennickname 3y agoSome people care (too much) about design details. Still a market though.
- lloydatkinson 3y agoIt's strange this doesn't support plain nosql databases. I'm not sure I see the value in a full blown relational setup for... form submissions.
- lloydatkinson 3y agoIt’s a miracle, it didn’t get flagged
- _heimdall 3y agoHow new is this Retool product? The idea that OpenAI, Amazon, NBC, Mercedes, and Doordash all use it seems dubious.
- prakashn27 3y agoRetool is popular for building internal dashboards on top of you data. It has been there for many years
- _heimdall 3y agoRetool has sure, but I'd expect the Form to DB homepage to be validating this product rather than the team behind it. I said this in a sibling comment too, I may just be unfairly nitpicking here but these "trusted by" marketing blocks just rub me the wrong way when the product is brand new.
- habosa 3y agoSee comment by the CEO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39476663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39476663 Retool is very widely adopted by major companies.
- _heimdall 3y agoSure, but that feels like validation for Retool rather than Form to DB. I may very well be nitpicking unfairly here, those marketing "trusted by" blocks on brand new products just always rub me the wrong way.
- slowhand09 3y agoLadies and gentlemen of the Hacker News jury, I’m just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW.. and runoff into the hills, or wherever.. Sometimes when I get a message on my mobile phone, I wonder: “Did little demons get inside and type it?” I don’t know!My primitive mind can’t grasp these concepts. But there is one thing I do know – when we get a "new" solution that replaces all the former solutions, and uses React or HTML, IT MUST BE MAGIC!
- ecmascript 3y agoLooks cool but what is the pricing? Get started for free kind of implies that it isn't free after a while or..?
- zubairq 3y agoI love this. I work on an openource project (in progress still) building forms on top of different databases and can say that Retool really nailed this one. Well done!
- Terretta 3y agoIt’s wild to read “there’s no one click form to database tool” in 2024 when 25+ years ago one was available in Vermeer FrontPage and of course ColdFusion had a database form wizard. Plenty “SSR” (the only place to render, so it wasn’t called that) tempting engines of the day, if you had an ODBC connection, you could generate form handlers with “one click”. Of course, this was also before OWASP (started circa 2001)...