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Geri Máté

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GraphQL Visualizer vs. Low-Code API Builder - DevHunt Digest #2

DevHunt is the open-source platform where you can showcase your developer tool. Teams compete every week for the top spot. Here's a look at who's in the race this time.


GraphQL Editor

GraphQL Editor is a popular open-source visual editor for GraphQL. I'm not really familiar with GraphQL, so other than giving a quick check to the UI and the landing page I couldn't really test it.

However, I could say that the onboarding is very well refined, the UI looks great and the documentation is compact and straightforward. It definitely lives up to the expectations of a project with almost 6K stars on GitHub.

DevTranslate

DevTranslate is a translation tool that supports different sequences and formats, including arb, json, strings, xml and yaml. Right after the sign up I've got a screen in front of me separated to where I can select 27 languages as source and output languages which the tool automatically translates with a single click. With the free plan you get 3000 tokens, one token for each character from the source, not counting formatting characters. Let's say if you select 3 output languages to translate a 93 characters long sentence, then it'll cost you 279 tokens.

I tried both to English and from English translations. It does a pretty good job translating a weather forecast written in Hungarian, and it does a decent job translating the English U Can't Touch This Wikipedia article to Italian - can't really say the same with Hungarian. You can check the results below:

DevTranslate translating a weather forecast from Hungarian to English.

DevTranslate translating MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This Wikipedia article from English to Italian.

Fastgen

Fastgen is a low-code API and workflow builder that offers hosting for your backend services, as well. Besides, you can create cron jobs with this tool. It helps you fast track building your app by offering templates which you can check out below.

Fastgen templates

Obviously, I had to choose the Pokémon Battle Simulator template. I like this tool a lot and I think it's worth checking out. Documentation is abundant and it works. If only it was open-source...

You can see the Pokémon Battle Simulator's tutorial video here.

Swiper Studio

Swiper Studio is a no-code builder for swiper UI components. First look at the landing page, I would've expected to see swipers on it and there wasn't any. It's not a big deal, it's just ironic, I guess?

Checked out the demo page. I know it's sometimes impossible to give demo without signing up but it's nice to have instant playground access.

There are tons of different settings you can adjust, and you can import CSS, too.

Chat2Code

Chat2Code is a code generator for several JS frameworks (React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, Vanilla) by utilizing GPT.

You set up the settings, compose what you're trying to get and Chat2Code will generate it for you.

Kombai

Kombai is a generative AI you can use to create frontend. It had an incredibly successful Product Hunt launch in August with more than 2K upvotes.

While it seems promising, I didn't try it. It needs access to my Figma account, and I'm not sure if it's the default for Figma but I wouldn't like to give access to all the Figma projects I have access to. The idea and the execution seems cool, though.

caisy

caisy is a headless CMS. After signing up I'm offered to pick a JS framework and a template that belongs to it. After picking one a window pops up to guide me on a quick tour. It would be nice but I can see that it's 16 steps – I wouldn't consider that a quick tour.

8 steps into the tour I noticed that the menu I selected because of the tutorial hides the things the tour is informing me about.

caisy tutorial

It's probably me but I don't like this kind of tutorial in games either, and after going through it, I can't really say I understand how caisy works. It's partially the concept of guided tutorials and the copy that seems far too long for my liking. I'm a little bit confused why they decided to go with this solution when they have a to-do list for on-boarding right after / behind the tour which is a more effective way to onboard users by my experience.

I was excited to give this tool a look but the tutorial could be improved. Right now I gave up and I don't know if developers are patient enough to go through with the tutorial part, too.

Maybe it's just me, but the landing page copy claiming I'll like caisy is just not sitting right with me, altering my expectations in a way that's really hard to live up to. Plus I think documentation should be in a more visible place, especially when you feel the need for a tutorial.

caisy landing page claiming I'll like the CMS

It's very much possible caisy is an amazing CMS, it's just that onboarding needs to be a lot smoother to align with what the tool is capable of.

WunderGraph Cosmo

Cosmo is an open-source GraphQL API management solution delivered by WunderGraph. Like I already mentioned, I'm not familiar with GraphQL, but I think if this tendency will keep on and GraphQL projects will launch often on DevHunt, I might need to educate myself about it.

Anyway, WunderGraph is a fairly popular framework with 2k stars on GitHub, so documentation is incredible. As far as the actual tool goes, I can't test it, I can't GraphQL, with all due respect.

GetTestMail

GetTestMail is an email testing tool. When I first opened this website, I was confused because everything was written in German. Wouldn't say this is a problem, but I think it's more usual to have your English website as default - I linked the English version here.

Update: They edited out the link to the English version on DevHunt.

It reminded me of MailSlurper immediately and I was happy to find a comparison page linked from the main page. GetTestMail claims to be more simple and secure to use because it's located in the EU. However, I'm curious if GetTestMail can be self-hosted because MailSlurper has the edge in that regard.

Anyway, I like that this project focuses on a very well-defined problem.

Final Countdown JS

I love this name! Final Countdown JS is an open-source – you guessed it right – react hook library for timers.

SnipCSS

SnipCSS is just a Chrome extension to extracts CSS components of a website. Or is it?

I think SnipCSS is a perfect example for having a simple idea and turn it into something fun. When you select something you'd like to get inspired from (for research and study purposes, obviously), the kiwi from the project's logo goes and takes it in your browser. And when the kiwi is done, you can give the HTML and the CSS a look on a new tab, check out the assets of the component, etc.

ForgeForms

ForgeForms is a form creator tool. It offers different templates which are a set of input fields for the most common form use cases. There is a survey template, as well, but I couldn't figure out how to add custom input fields.

If you need generic forms, it can get the job done, though.

Refact AI

Refact AI is an open-source coding assistant. I like how simple it is to get started with Refact AI. It can be used for several capabilities, such as code explanation and completion, bug fixing, chat to generate code powered by GPT 3.5, and (plot twist) refactoring.

Filifly

Filifly is a file sharing solution. You can use it to share and receive files through different communication platforms, such as emailing, Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, etc. Right now file size is limited to 20 MBs but they claim it's going to be increased.

UniHosted

UniHosted is a platform to host UniFi controllers. I don't know much about UniFi, but UniHosted offers fully managed UniFi Controllers with automatic backups and worry-free SSL setup.


That's it for the weekly batch of developer tools that launched on DevHunt. What's your favorite project out of them? Leave it in the comments and show some love by casting a vote!

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