Every thing you need to know about Lowdefy

In category: ← Software Development / IDE & Tools

About Lowdefy

Build internal tools, BI dashboards, admin panels, CRUD apps and workflows in minutes using YAML / JSON on an self-hosted, open-source platform. Connect to your data sources, host via Serverless, Netlify or Docker.

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Languages/Platforms/Technologies:

Nodejs

Lincenses:

Apache-2.0

More about Lowdefy

Lowdefy

Lowdefy is an open-source (Apache-2.0) low-code framework that lets you build web apps with YAML or JSON configuration files. It is great for building admin panels, BI dashboards, workflows, and CRUD apps.

Advantages of writing internal tools in YAML or JSON

All apps use the same structured config schema, this makes it easy to debug large apps or pick up where others left off.
Nothing is hidden in a GUI. This allows you to do basic essential stuff, like copy, paste, find, replace, review changes etc. which makes developing apps more productive.
App config is just data, thus you can even develop scripts to create and manage your apps.
YAML files work with your favorite developer and source control tools.

How Lowdefy apps work 👉 https://docs.lowdefy.com

Lowdefy apps are built using:

📦 Blocks are the visual part of the app, the React components. Lowdefy provides a set of default block types but app capabilities can be extended with custom blocks.
⚙️ Operators are the functions that are used to express logic within an app. Lowdefy has many built in easy to use operator functions for creating dynamic applications with ease, however, custom javascript operators can also be loaded.
⚡️ Actions are triggered by events, like clicking a button or loading a page. When events are triggered, a list of javascript functions can be called. Lowdefy has a set of useful actions, but applications functionality can be enriched by adding custom Lowdefy actions.
📣 Requests make calls to external services to hydrate applications with data or post data to external services. Lowdefy doesn't have any data storage built in. Instead, it provides connections to external services like databases and APIs.

We are working on expanding the list of connections, and you can vote for the ones you need here.

Lowdefy apps are self-hosted

Our goal is to make it easy to run Lowdefy apps anywhere. Lowdefy app servers are also stateless which makes it easy to run apps in serverless environments. Currently you can host Lowdefy apps:

As a Docker container.
On AWS Lambda using Serverless.
On Netlify using Netlify functions.

Quick start

Run:

npx lowdefy@latest init && npx lowdefy@latest dev

This will create a file called lowdefy.yaml in the current working directory that contains the configuration for a Lowdefy app (as well as a .gitignore) and launch a local development server at http://localhost:3000. Make changes in the lowdefy.yaml file to see them reflect in the app.

Examples

CRUD example

This example shows patterns to implement a data admin app which allows users to view, create new, edit and delete data records.

Survey example

This is a simple customer survey example built with Lowdefy. With this example we demonstrate how simple it is to define a public webform and thank you page in Lowdefy.

Case management (ticketing) system example

This example focuses on building a rich UI for a hypothetical case management app, in a customer relations setting.

Movies reporting example

This example demonstrates useful patterns for building a BI report/dashboard pages in Lowdefy. It connects to a MongoDB database with the Atlas Movies sample dataset pre-loaded.

Other Lowdefy packages and resources

@lowdefy/blocks-aggrid: Lowdefy blocks to render Ag-Grid tables.
@lowdefy/blocks-amcharts: Lowdefy blocks to render AmCharts v4.
Lowdefy Kubernetes examples.

Changelog

All changes to this project are documented in CHANGELOG.md.

Contributing

Run Lowdefy servers locally by adding your Lowdefy config to the app/.. folder. Use one of the following scripts to the server:

yarn start: Starts the production server.
yarn start:dev: Starts the production server in next development mode, useful for debugging Lowdefy code changes.
yarn start:server-dev: Starts the development server in next production mode, useful for developing your Lowdefy config locally.

yarn install and yarn build should be executed manually during development, this allows you to build only the package you are working on. Server needs to be restarted after package rebuild.

Please also see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Security

If you discover a vulnerability, please follow the guide in SECURITY.md to disclose this to us responsibly.

Code of conduct

In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to follow the Contributor Covenant code of conduct. See CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for more.