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Thomas Hansen
Thomas Hansen

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at aista.com

Create a Web API backend in seconds - No coding required

If you're an Angular, React, Vue, iPhone, or Android developer, you'll need a backend at some point. Unless you're one of those who knows PHP, Python, or C# to the core, this is obviously a problem for you, especially if you want to focus only on your frontend skills.

We solved the problem for you by allowing you to create a Web API backend wrapping your database in seconds, and we'll even host your backend for free, giving you the opportunity to test our system for 90 days. This allows you to generate a backend in some few seconds, not worrying about hosting it, such that you can focus only on the frontend parts of your problem. 3 clicks and you've got your backend, literally. Below are screenshots of the process.

Generate a backend CRUD API in seconds

Then as you've created your backend, you'll need a database. You can either connect to your existing database, or use one of our free and open source databases found in our plugins section. Below is a screenshot of installing the "Chinook" SQLite database into your backend.

Low-Code CRUD database API generator

At this point all you need to do is to generate a CRUD API wrapping your database.

Generating a CRUD API wrapping your database

And literally, you are done! Now you can play around with your newly generated CRUD API using the "Endpoints" menu item.

Invoking your newly generated CRUD endpoints

All in all the process takes about 1 minute before you've got your HTTP Web API, allowing you to focus on the Angular, React, Vue, iPhone, or Android development parts. Let me know in the comments what you think, and please have in mind that we released our hub yesterday and things are a little bit in the BETA stages yet. Below you can see me walking you through the entire process. If you want to try it out for yourself there's a link below where you can create your backend.

Top comments (12)

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dyfet profile image
David Sugar

What I very often have to do is come up with an admin console (which really is just a crud with role based permissions) and a web api integration layer for other things. I actually use go for this now only because it's not very painful. So that use case I do get. But I at times also had to do disconnected delivery and deploy, such as air-gapped scifs.

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen • Edited

It's the use case the thing was created for. I wanted to create CRM systems, to replace with my existing employer some custom junkware built on top of Sugar CRM, and I figured I could use "meta programming". Replacing the Sugar junk ever materialized, but then again who cares ... ;)

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dyfet profile image
David Sugar

I knew Larry Augustin too ;). We may have even had some VA systems machines, but we never did business with or used sugar crm at ost. He did express some interest in buying us out once, though. But I actually know where many bodies are buried in the valley ;).

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

Hehehe, write about it 😁

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dyfet profile image
David Sugar

I actually had put together a kind of outline for a novel, "Natural Minds", as a kind of spoof on SV, VC, and the whole AI mania, and it touches upon everything including marking and branding, SV style. It also transitions into a horror story as they eventually turn to using dead brains to "scale" better and cut labor costs...

That Natural Minds spends $1 million+ on branding, and ends up, after months of secrecy, presenting their surprise new logo, which looks a lot like two black lightening bolts, side by side, is actually not fiction, though, but based on a real SV startup, as is the heavy and hidden hand of secret intel insiders, foreign and domestic, on the board of investors. You can't make this stuff up.

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

turn to using dead brains to "scale" better and cut labor costs

Hahahaha 😂

I thought we were LONG since beyond that point. Looking at the (lack of) quality coming out of some of these firms, it's the only natural conclusion 😁

looks a lot like two black lightening bolts

Very accurate description depicting the censorship regimes some of these firms are applying to desperately silence us who actually create real value ... 😉

You need to put in some book burning analogies into it 😁

You can't make this stuff up

I know very well that Silicon Valley is the spearhead of Pentagon - There are way to few of us (who knows it) unfortunately ... 🤪

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mshafiey profile image
Mohsen

In complex queries like multi tables join I like to write it myself, can I make an API with my own query?

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

Thx Mohsen for a great question, and the answer is yes you can. You can either automatically have Magic wrap your own custom SQL by using the CRUD Generator and its "SQL" tab, or manually create everything yourself as I demonstrate in the following followup article below.

The link above would also allow you to apply any custom business logic, such as authorisation requirements, validators, and other parts needed to create a working HTTP endpoint :)

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slava_supro_8795550bb26ca profile image
Slava Supro

Hi
What will be the cost after 90 days?

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

Great question. It depends. We're not 100% certain yet, but the current price structure that we're working with and we believe we'll use is as follows.

  1. Students - $10 per month for a single cloudlet
  2. Professional - $49 per month for a single cloudlet
  3. Enterprise - Depends, varying from some few hundred dollars per months to tens of thousands depending upon the needs of the company

Notice, I don't want to guarantee the above prices, since it depends upon our own cost of hosting things, which is why we're doing the MVP/BETA release to get more data such that we can start calculating, but we're 95% certain of that we'll end up with something very close to the above.

We really want to provide something for students too, investing in the future, since it's probably one of the easiest methods to teach yourself (other) constructs such as Angular, React, Swift and SQL :)

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sharvin profile image
Sharvin

Great article!
Is it a need to know Hyperlambda, or is possible to work with Magic without having any idea about Hyperlambda?

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

Great question, if you have an existing database you want to wrap inside a CRUD API, there is no need to know Hyperlambda, and you can only rely upon the CRUD Generator to do all the work for you. If you have additional business logic requirements not possible to solve through configuring the CRUD generator process, you will benefit from knowing Hyperlambda, but you can probably figure out most of the stuff you need to know without knowing any Hyperlambda.

So the answer in general is no, however it is beneficial to understand the basics of the language obviously ... :)