[omeraplak]

Hello HN , here is Omer. I'm the Co-founder & CTO of refine.

Today we are celebrating the new features of refine with this launch event. Last year was a landmark year for us since we watched refine grow from zero and establish itself as a prominent React framework.

It all started with a single question two years ago: "Is it possible for a low-code web framework to quickly generate CRUD applications while still allowing custom styling, logic and workflow?". None of the existing solutions could give us the amount of flexibility that we needed, so we started building one from scratch.

Today refine evolved into a full-blown framework for building CRUD applications like admin panels, dashboards, internal tools, and storefronts. It eliminates the repetitive tasks demanded by CRUD operations and saves days of development time.

With the new release, we add two new features to refine core

1- Inferencer @pankod/refine-inferencer is a package that provides a way to automatically generate views for resources based on the data structure. The aim is to reduce the amount of time spent on creating views for resources by generating the code automatically that can be customized easily.

2- Swizzle The swizzle is a command in refine-cli that allows you to customize the refine's supported components and data providers. It allows you to eject selected files from the refine packages and modify depending on your needs.

Unique "Headless UI" approach enables developers to use any UI framework or custom design without constraints. For convenience, refine is shipped with ready-made integrations with three powerful UI frameworks: Ant Design, Material UI & Mantine.

Being totally backend agnostic, refine can connect to 15+ backend services out-of-the-box, incl. custom REST & GraphQL API's. With refine, developers have 100% control over their projects as they may build, style and deploy the way they like.

And of course, we want to know what you think about refine and any ideas or suggestions you may have for our solution. Please write them and we'll be happy to join the conversation.

[revskill]

Thanks you very much. I love Refine ideas and the abstraction (Data Provider is cooool).

Would love to improve the examples though:

- Example code for backend Rest API to be used with Refine (i'm confused about specification on openapi request params/response)

- Example code on only using data provider package (for example, we don't need to use refine routing provider, auth provider,...)

[omeraplak]

Yes, this is definitely an area where we want to improve. Thank you for your feedback.

edit: By the way, what is your opinion on the "inferencer" package?

[revskill]

I've not used much the inference package. Let me check it first.

[omeraplak]

@pankod/refine-inferencer is an experimental package and it is now in the early stages of development. We are working on improving the package and adding new features.

Document: https://refine.dev/docs/packages/documentation/inferencer/

If you have any suggestions or feedback, please let us know in the GitHub Discussions

https://github.com/refinedev/refine/discussions/3046

[revskill]

I need one more crucial feature, it's row grouping with aggregation in table view.

[omeraplak]

If your table component can do that, fine for Refine. Which UI framework are you using?

[rjzzleep]

It looks good. I checked how long this has been around. Two years seems longer than most react apps. Couple of questions:

1. How complex was the upgrade path between major versions?

2. Are you guys cashflow positive?

3. What are your competitors?

Thanks

[omeraplak]

Thank you so much.

1. We've released a codemod when releasing v3 and allowed users to upgrade easily from v2 to v3 and we're planning to do the same for v4 as well. https://refine.dev/docs/migration-guide/

2. We got a similar question before. You can check it out here: https://github.com/refinedev/refine/discussions/3261

3. We have detailed comparison table for similar tools: https://refine.dev/docs/comparison/

Have you ever tried similar tools for building a CRUD app before? Can you suggest any for us to take a look?

[edgyquant]

You should just answer the question instead of pointing users to GitHub. The answer is no, they are not and they plan on selling features in the future.

[omeraplak]

Thank you for your warning and comment. I shared the link because I thought people could contribute to the discussion on GitHub. To avoid any misunderstandings, I want to clarify that Refine will always remain open source and will continue to be developed with the community. So we are adopting the "open core" model which is very popular and widely accepted in the open source ecosystem.

To reiterate, Refine will always remain open-source.