Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Pretty cool and useful, thanks for sharing.

I wonder, what did you use as a db? Since you started with a spreadsheet, you could just use that. Google Spreadsheet has a json api that you can query directly from your web app.

I did it for http://hasgluten.com, if you want to see it in practice (hosted for free on github). Easier to keep the "backend" updated, since you just have to edit the spreadsheet.




Don't encourage people to use spreadsheets as a databases. It never ends well.


It's actually quite useful if your application never updates your data and you want a data entry system for free. Downside is validation is a PITA, but for certain things using something like Google spreadsheets will get you a very long way very quickly. You can then build a better data entry system after that.


In my experience the gains made from a quick setup are quickly offset by the amount of time wasted by not having any data validation, and the resulting bad data that gets into the system.


How is bad data getting in to the system if not through the application?


For an app with 200 records!?


You're not worried about accidentally corrupting data? I do that all the time with spreadsheets. Seems like it would could be pretty bad if you accidentally labelled something gluten free and it wasn't.


!? what's the diff with a db!?


I'm using MongoDB. At first, I used google spreadsheet as a database using JSON API. But the spreadsheet was public and it was vandalized so much.

So I just exported the sheet as JSON array and put it in Mongo.


Sorry, not sure I follow. Is mongo public? I dont think so. So the issue isn't the spreadsheet, it's your data with public write access, which is of course a very bad idea.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: