There are a ton of online CMS services out there. And a ton of (new) backend-as-a-service products too. But I can't seem to find what I am looking for.
I am building an app for a client. The app contains data about shops, products, and more. The client must be able to update this data (and not just one person: each shop manager needs to be able to log in and edit the data for their own shop). And of course the app must be able to access this data.
Client edits data online
This has to be extremely user-friendly and completely online. I don't want to sell my client something where they need to install stuff on their server. I don't want to sell them something that's accessible online but looks like phpMyAdmin.
I want a shop owner to be able to go to a webpage, log in, and then see a pretty UI where they can edit the data for their shop. The back-end needs to have a pretty front-end that's auto-generated for whatever data this particular shop owner is allowed to edit.
So there are two bits: storing data in the cloud in such a way that it can be accessed by the app (which I am building with Titanium), and allowing the client to log into the backend and edit the data in a non-tech, user-friendly way.
Here's a list of things I tried...
Backend-as-a-service
Services with a great back-end, but without easy auto-generated data editing website:
Appcelerator (Titanium) Cloud Service
Amazon EC2
Stackmob
BackBeam
WebVanta
Parse
API o Mat
ShepHertz Cloud42
Kii
Online CMS
Services that provide a nice way for clients to edit data, but no easy way for apps to connect:
CloudCMS
(and many others I'm sure)
It's insane that no-one seems to be providing the cross-breed of BaaS and online CMS. So many people are building apps for clients, and so many clients are not tech-savvy and are reluctant to get a special server and host database software they don't understand. Why does this not exist? What am I missing?
With apiOmat it's easy to create your own data-editing app for e.g. with JavaScript SDK and HTML. Or you send a feature request so that they build a module for your preferred CMS.
As you mentioned, Cloud CMS is a really good option (disclaimer: I'm one of the founders). The product provides an enterprise content management backend and an API that lets you plug in some really powerful features right into your mobile apps.
This month, we released a brand new user interface which provides much of what you're asking about. Instant forms, document libraries, search and workflow all in one place.
You can check out Cloud CMS here: http://www.cloudcms.com
I completely agree with your assessment particularly with respect to the last mile (getting the final app built). It's kind of the wild west out there and the strong technologies are still proving out.
You mentioned Titanium - that's a good choice. I also quite like the Ionic Framework (http://www.drifty.com/). It's a step in the right direction.
Related
I'm in the process of designing a cloud deployed website for a new solution my company is looking to provide. I have been attempting to answer a few questions and haven't had any luck, so when in rome.
First, I don't want the website to be stuck to any one particular framework. I know there is no way to completely future proof a website, but I would rather not put all of our eggs in one basket.
Secondly, I want to have a separation between the front and back end entirely. I have a list of reasons why I'm looking to do this, don't necessarily want to get into the conversation of what they are. Server Side rendering for the most part is out of the question.
So where does that leave me?
My initial thoughts on the design are to have a REST API that can be accessed for any API calls (this may be turned to GraphQL in the future).
The design decisions that I'm mostly wresting with are for the front end. The website will be a dashboard type system, where tenants can log in and see screens for them.
I was thinking that I would have a sort of shell, that hooks on to the index.html. This would have it's own routing, that would render micro-applications that are completely separate from the shell logic.
So for example, if I load index.html, path being "/"
It has some routes that it's responsible for, lets say
"/todos"
"/account"
If I accessed the /todos route, my shell application would then render that micro app. This application would be completely separate from the shell, except some data that might be loaded via the window. Once this application is rendered via the shell application.
So my todos route, for example, could be a redux application that's independent. It could have it's own routing, etc.
Is this is a common architecture? Are there any examples of this? Is there a better way of going about this?
Thanks for any insight!
Sounds like your well and truly over engineering this beast.
You may take on such an architecture for a HUGE build with many dev teams all working separately. Small agile team, the above would create so much overhead in boilerplate and brain ache in context switching between each "app"
Micro-service architecture is seriously great. Just don't break it up too small, read your use case well and break your services up accordingly.
For example: we are a team of 3. We have a pretty large-ish app devised into:
Php API
Backend management interface (redux)
Frontend website (html, react, php)
Search service (elastic search)
Cache (redis)
Data store (mysql)
All on running in multiple docker containers across multiple hosts. Pull down the backend.. Fine the frontend website is still up and running!
I've been developing web apps some years now, actually as a hobby. When I write something, unsing Laravel, Sails.js, or Meteor and I add a feature, I upload it and it's there, for everyone.
However, I've always been wondering how bigger sites like facebook manage to roll out features to just some users. Do they push their changes to just some servers? But in that case - how do they manage the make the selected users access just these servers?
Or some db entry to see if the user has access to the feature/ version?
So how does it work?
Really interested in this :)
Large sites like Facebook use a technique called Feature toggles to control the functionality that is active at run-time. The following blog article describes Facebook's approach:
https://abhishek-tiwari.com/post/decoupling-deployment-and-release-feature-toggles
I have a desktop ERP application used by around 100 customers at different locations.Since its cumbersome to manage deployment and installation of such environment,i am planning to move this to web platform.I came accross this concept of software as service..I intend to go for this design approach...
The challenge i face here is that all customers will have there own databases and i want to make single web application which can connect to all the databases based on some licensing mechanism...
I am not quite sure how to do this.
Feedback and suggestions on this are most welcome.
The SaaS philosophy is building in two principles. Multi tenant principles and local tenant principles. At first you store user stuff in one database, for second user created new database, for third - created new database and etc. In local tenant option you store all data of all users in one database.
At first - you need a database storage (mysql,msslg, other with) , web aplication for use in browser (buld in php, or html5, of adobe flash(OMG!).
Web application conect with database - used permission for users and etc.
at simple thats all!
And a have a question in which for you ERP store a users,passwords,documents and other?
Depending on the answer, to look for a solution.
In search of a 'Cloud Content Management System' like http://osmek.com/,
I could not find a single other CCMS that does what I want it to do :)
Basically, what I need is content management without a website frontend attached.
Just basic storage of data, documents, images, etc. etc. with a simple API to access, like Osmek. Just NoSQL or SQL based services won't do, because there can be images or documents attached. And, ofcourse, I'd like to have a backend to manage the data (like a typical CMS does) without writing a backend myself (if it's just the service)
Osmek is great, and it works most awesome in conjunction with Actionscript 3, but I'm just looking / searching for alternatives (if there even are any yet).
I need this form of hosted content management for content-manageing a mobile application.
So the question is: Is there anything else out there that does the same as osmek that you know of? OR, how do you manage application specific content?
Thanks!
I'd encourage you to take a look at Cloud CMS (http://www.cloudcms.com).
Cloud CMS is a JSON content management (CMS) platform built on top of MongoDB with a REST API and drivers for a variety of languages. You just drop in a driver and call methods to query, create, update and delete content.
The platform provides everything you need to power the back-end for mobile and HTML5 applications - from managing your content to managing users and groups, credentials, security tokens (OAuth2), Git-like collaborative workspaces, real-time analytics, activities, data transformations and more.
Everything runs in the cloud on an elastic back-end. It's probably more akin to Parse than a traditional CMS. You just make calls to the APIs. We keep the costs low by letting you only pay for what you use (almost like a utility). You just pay for storage and data transfer.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the founders of Cloud CMS. So I'm a pretty lousy reference in terms of its objective value. However, a couple of us worked at traditional "ECM" companies in the past and we think we've built something that puts a genuine beating on those guys.
Lets say my web server app is in drupal or wordpress, or even code igniter, how would one get about integrating a comment system? TSpecifically what I am trying to find out is if anyone was able to find a successful approach that would save some time as opposed to me going down the road of tying myself to a specific CMS content system.
Just throwing in some considerations here (by no means complete):
Are users also accessing your content (and its comment system) via the website?
If so, you'll want to have a comment interface that is available on the website too, and the easiest choice may be to use the comment system natively supplied by your CMS / through plugins.
If on the other hand your users will only be using the iOS app(s) for commenting (via a native interface) or you'll be heavily customizing the website anyway, using a comment system independent from your CMS might be an option.
How will the content be accessed from the app?
Via a simple web view? Or will the app download via an API provided by your CMS and display it in a native UI? If you are using an API provided by your CMS, you will have the same issue with your content as with your comments when moving CMSes.
You could add an intermediate layer that abstracts from the specific CMS API.
Or if you don't really plan on moving CMSes but want to prepare for that event nevertheless, you could simply implement a no-frills "version check" to ask the server for the CMS kind / version it is using, and if it doesn't match what your app expects, ask the users to update. This isn't the prettiest user experience, but it might be sufficient depending on what you're actually planning.