Baserow Cloudron app - Airtable alternative

bram

Hello everyone,

My name is Bram Wiepjes and I am the founder of Baserow (https://baserow.io) which is an open source no-code database tool and Airtable alternative.

First of all I wanted to tell that Cloudron is an amazing platform! This is the first time that I worked with it, but it is just great! The ease of use, stability, addons and low learning curve make it a fantastic product and I have become a fan.

As a fun weekend side-project I decided to make a Baserow Cloudron app. My initial version can be found here https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow/-/merge_requests/154 and I would love for people to test it out and review the code. All feedback is welcome and would be much appreciated.

Even though this version works, tested it on Cloudron 6.1.2, there are a couple of issues that I ran into. Baserow depends on Redis version 5 because it uses Django Channels 3. The Cloudron documentation mentioned that the Redis addon installs version 5, but it was always version 4 for me. I solved this by installing Redis 5 locally in the Docker image which is fine for now because the state doesn't necessarily needs to be persistent.

Baserow exists of a backend and web-frontend which communicates only via a REST API and Web Socket with each other. Is there a possibility to to split the backend and web-frontend into two different images? Right now I've combined them into one image. If that is not possible, is it possible to do two health checks? One for the backend and one for the web-frontend?

Lastly, it would be great to get listed in the App Store once this version is stable.

Best,
Bram

mehdi

@bram nice to see some app developers porting their own apps to cloudron

@bram said in Baserow Cloudron app - Airtable alternative:

The Cloudron documentation mentioned that the Redis addon installs version 5, but it was always version 4 for me. I solved this by installing Redis 5 locally in the Docker image which is fine for now because the state doesn't necessarily needs to be persistent.

I'm not sure, I have never written a Cloudron app that needed to use Redis. I'll let the Cloudron devs answer you on this one.
Installing redis locally in the meantime is a good work-around for the moment.

@bram said in Baserow Cloudron app - Airtable alternative:

Is there a possibility to to split the backend and web-frontend into two different images? Right now I've combined them into one image

Nope, no way to do that on Cloudron. Sorry, you indeed have to package them together, and start both with something like supervisor, which should already be available in the base image.

@bram said in Baserow Cloudron app - Airtable alternative:

If that is not possible, is it possible to do two health checks? One for the backend and one for the web-frontend?

Not at the moment, but I think the devs were talking about ditching the current http request way of doing health-checks, in favor of using the native HEALTHCHECK dockerfile instruction (https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/builder/#healthcheck). Not sure if work has started on this yet.

plusone-nick

@bram welcome and glad to have you! @girish & @nebulon are amazing! Looking forward to this collab, also you should check out https://www.budibase.com/ no-code app builder. They recently implemented Airtable support - Baserow would be good there too +1

doodlemania2

this is huge! welcome @bram - big fan of your app!!!!

nebulon

Hi @bram and welcome to our forum!

This is indeed great news and awesome how much progress you already made for the packaging.

I will give it a try later today and hopefully we can get this into the app library soon

Regarding redis version, I can confirm that the addon has version 4.9.0 installed, however we are currently preparing a new base image for apps and addons, which is based on Ubuntu 20.04 and then redis is updated. I see that @girish just already updated the docs

For healthcheck one option is to add a small daemon which provides for example a /healthcheck route and internally then pings the corresponding services for health. That way the app package only has one route but that one will indicate if all components are healthy.

I hope I can give more feedback once I've tested it. Just a heads up, we also require selenium tests for all app packages, but we are happy to provide them for Baserow then.

marcusquinn

@bram Great stuff - looking forward to giving it a good test and helping with feedback.

Personal opinion but maybe shared. Something I've found, and I think others do too, is making open-source a sustainable business, and for users, avoiding gotchyas, lock-ins or usage taxes.

The business models I've found the happiest are with EspoCRM and Freescout.

Essentially, the FOSS is unlimited in usage, and the Premium is too.

Premium revenue coming from selling extra setup "Packs" that are typically only needed by businesses, and also effectively fast-track best-practice template setups.

So FOSS users get the full benefit of the framework to use, test,, feedback on and help evolve.

And those using the app to save or make time or money will happily pay for the premium packs as they get them setup with templates that would otherwise take a longer time to recreate.

I understand per-user licensing for vendor-managed SaaS because users numbers tend to correlate to support requests or expectations.

However, for self-hosted, I hope to encourage you to consider unlimited users and, instead look to premium packs, templates, setups, perhaps with an annual license.

So you have good and repeat income but businesses that have low margins and high user count needs aren't looking at prohibitive scaling costs because if they are self-hosting, they also tend to be self-supporting for 1st-line requests. Consider it support work-sharing

Keep up the great work, I love anything that encourages understanding database design and record-keeping and communications best-practice. I'm sure the world will thank and reward you for your innovation!

bram

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome and for the info.

For now it is okay if Redis doesn't keep the persistent state, so we can use the one that is installed within the Basero app image. Would be nice to use the Cloudron addon in the future once Redis 5 is fully supported. Once the Docker healthcheck is supported we can use that.

Looking forward to your feedback!

bram

I have a quick follow up question. Is it possible for Cloudron to generate a unique secret key and provide that as environment variable? Baserow depends on a secret key to create password reset and invite tokens, but this needs to be unique value for each installation. Otherwise if everyone uses the same key, it will become possible to create password reset tokens which is a security issue.

nebulon

@bram similar to cookie secrets, this usually is done in the startup script (start.sh).

Something on the lines of (just some pseudo bash here):

if [[ ! -f /app/data/.secret ]]; then
    echo "SECRET_ENV=$(some way to generate a secret)" > /app/data/.secret
fi

source /app/data/.secret

Very much depends on how the app consumes this. Sometime like gitlab they have a secrets file like: https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/gitlab-app/-/blob/master/start.sh#L92

mehdi

@bram an example here : https://git.cloudron.io/mehdi/river/-/blob/master/start.sh#L64

if [ ! -f /app/data/session.secret ]; then
  dd if=/dev/urandom bs=256 count=1 | base64 > /app/data/session.secret
fi

bram

This will work for my use case. Thanks!

ianhyzy

This looks like a fantastic tool, can't wait to try it out on Cloudron!

timconsidine

@ianhyzy Ditto
Is the status of this known ? Coming to a cloudron near me soon ??

doodlemania2

@timconsidine It's available now, just not in the store. Just follow instructions above and you'll be up and running in no time.

timconsidine

@doodlemania2 Cheers !

timconsidine

This post is deleted!

timconsidine

@doodlemania2 Having trouble with this :
Repeat errors like App installation error: Installation failed: Unable to pull image tcmbp132021/baserow:1:3:0. Please check the network or if the image needs authentication. statusCode: 400

I can build locally and I can push docker image.
But interestingly docker for desktop reports 3.25Gb locally and repository only 1.1Gb

Does the image need authentication ??
Or maybe there is indeed a network error
Grrrr

timconsidine

And when I run the container locally, it starts and immediately fails
http://ocalhost:3000 doesn't respond and docker for desktop reports not started
I think there is a build problem

timconsidine

Bizarre
Now working
Maybe there was some network glitch going on
I did do docker trust just in case
But had to delete images multiple times and try again
Anyway now deployed to and working on cloudron - yay !
Thank you @bram !!

thetomester13

@staff any thoughts on publishing Baserow as unstable? I've been using it on and off and it's quite smooth. Not sure what else is needed from a packaging perspective though.

girish

@bram Are you open to have this app published in the Cloudron store? This involves moving the packaging to the git.cloudron.io and also have automated tests (we can help with both).

bram

@timconsidine Glad to hear that it now works for you!

bram

@girish Apologies for my super late response. I don't check the Cloudron forum that often, but luckily @tomershivani reached out to me via email notifying me about your question. I would love to have Baserow in the Cloudron app store. I am not sure which steps I exactly need to make. Is there a documentation page about this? Or is it just a matter of creating a new repo on git.cloudron.io containing the files that now live here https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow/-/tree/develop/deploy/cloudron, add automated tests and you will do the rest? Would love to learn a bit more about this process and help with the automated tests would be much appreciated.

girish

@bram I wrote up a quick publishing doc here - https://docs.cloudron.io/packaging/publishing/ . If you can just put the deploy code in git.cloudron.io as a separate repo with a license, I can take it from there. I only needed your go ahead to move this forward

robi

@girish said in Baserow Cloudron app - Airtable alternative:

I wrote up a quick publishing doc here - https://docs.cloudron.io/packaging/publishing/ .

Beautiful!

One small typo found:

At this point, Cloudron team will look into your package and get it ready from publishing.

from = for

bram

@girish I just created an account on git.cloudron.io, but it seems like I can't create a new repository. When creating a new project I get the error "Namespace is not valid". All the other repo's are in the cloudron project https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron, but it seems like I can't create a new repo there. Am I missing something?

Alternatively, you can find the deploy code in our own public repo and copy it from there https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow/-/tree/master/deploy/cloudron. It already has an MIT license there.

How would it work in the future if we release a new version of Baserow? Can we deploy the latest version to the app store?

jdaviescoates

@bram said in Baserow Cloudron app - Airtable alternative:

I can't create a new repo there. Am I missing something?

I'm sure @girish will reply similarly shortly but I they'll need to give your account access because by default they have it locked down

bram

@jdaviescoates That makes sense. I'll await his response.

girish

@bram awesome, I will take it from here! Give me a day or two to look into this.

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Baserow Cloudron app - Airtable alternative