[t0astbread]

This is like Firebase but actually fun!

Jokes aside though, I think there's a real use-case for something like this: Small multi-user CRUD apps, most often for a confined audience that don't warrant whipping up some kind of web server software and deploying it to a VM or a lambda function or whatever. Just create some tables, write some markup and you're done. Share the URL, it's live!

You could also use it for stuff like simple form submissions in otherwise static sites (à la Netlify) or website hosting in general. Just have your static site generator spit out an ugliest.app bundle and deploy it using curl. You get some dynamic content generation for free!

Hopefully this does not sound insane but I think this idea of "something like Access, kind of, but on the web" is brilliant and necessary. I don't wanna tell you what to do but maybe open sourcing this would be beneficial? Judging by how fast you've been fixing bugs and adding features in the comments I figure the code is not a mess. People might just prefer contributing that one feature they were missing instead of writing their own web server for their tiny app.

[mxuribe]

> something like Access, kind of, but on the web

I do a little tech consulting on the side (mostly web dev, but sometimes just regular "IT stuff" too)...and I've had clients who i know would be a pain if i conduct the usual process for developing an app/website for them...and often (to save myself from headaches) try to look for a solution for them that is something like Access (or super Excel) but for the web...and haven't found one that is nicely balanced yet. This kind of thing - if it evolves a little more on the ugliness side - might eventually fit the bill. (To clarify: i have no care about the ugly aspect, but the same annoying clients who would benefit from this paradigm are the same ones who criticize apps because they're not "pretty enough"...So, there's that to consider.)

[t0astbread]

Exactly! As for the visual aspect, you can do whatever you want on your own pages. Just the handful of pages that make the editor are "ugly" (unless you can smuggle something like a user stylesheet into your client's browser). The question is if your client would use the editor themselves in the first place. It's not rocket science but that templating language might be a bit more daunting to a general audience than Access.

[akrymski]

Have you tried AirTable?

[t0astbread]

I have noticed AirTable but I've never tried it. Maybe it's good but on the spectrum of customization AirTable seems closer to Excel or Google Sheets than Access or something custom-made.

Another important aspect is data protection. For my last "just CRUD" project I had to implement at-rest encryption where PII is only accessible with the user's password[1]. Something like that would be possible in JavaScript in an ugliest.app but if I'm not mistaken not in AirTable. Most businesses would probably be fine with it but I'm always a bit uncomfortable entrusting someone else with any unencrypted customer data, especially PII. (But I'm not saying AirTable doesn't do its job protecting customer data.)

[1] It just so happens that this was part of my undergrad thesis project so you can read up on the encryption scheme: https://github.com/T0astBread/thesis/releases/latest/downloa... (section 4.4.2 "Personally Identifiable Information").

[mxuribe]

I've heard the name but never tried it. I'll give it a go; thanks!