DEV Community

Cover image for How I’ve built 100+ open-source apps with automation tools
Sm0ke
Sm0ke

Posted on • Updated on

How I’ve built 100+ open-source apps with automation tools

Hello Coders,

I am a freelance developer and I've generated more than 100 apps in different languages and architectures, using automation developer tools, HTML parsing, and simple UI-Ready boilerplate code enhanced with basic modules (authentication, database, tooling).

The free ones are published on Github under MIT License (free, unlimited copies allowed) and I will mention a few here, in this article.


About the automation process

I decided to build an automation workflow, based on my freelancing experience from the last two years, mostly based on the feedback and clients requirements:

  • The clients constantly require a variety of designs to choose from
  • Apps should be delivered in modern technologies (this makes my life easier, but is not true in all cases)
  • Legacy apps migration to newer technologies using low budgets.

To solve all those problems and challenges I've built a semi-automated workflow:

  • Extract components for various template engines (Jinja2, PUG, Blade) from flat HTML files using an HTML parser written in Python / BS4
  • Inject the processed design into existing boilerplate code: Django / Flask Admin Dashboards, Static Sites, Jamstack, simple Flask Web Apps
  • Execute automatically a minimum set of tests using Puppeteer and Selenium.

Datta Able Django latest dashboard

Admin Dashboard generated by the AppSeed platform in Django Framework on top of Datta Able, a modern Bootstrap 4 dashboard template. The Django codebase is provided with authentication, database, ORM, and deployment scripts.

Datta Able (enhaced with dark mode) - Open-Source Seed project generated by AppSeed.


Django Material Kit latest app

Designed for those who like bold elements and beautiful websites, Material Kit 2 is ready to help you create stunning websites and web apps. Material Kit 2 is built with over 60 frontend individual elements, like buttons, inputs, navbars, nav tabs, cards, or alerts, giving you the freedom of choosing and combining.

Material Kit - Starter generated by AppSeed.


React Soft Dashboard fullstack

Start your Development with an Innovative Admin Template for Material-UI and React. Soft UI Dashboard React is built with over 70 frontend individual elements, like buttons, inputs, navbars, nav tabs, cards, or alerts, giving you the freedom of choosing and combining. The product comes with a simple JWT authentication flow: login/register/logout.

🚀 Built with React App Generator

  • ✅ Innovative Soft UI Design - Crafted by Creative-Tim
  • ✅ React, Redux, Redux-persist
  • ✅ Authentication: JWT Tokens,
  • OAuth via GitHub
  • ✅ Full-stack ready using:

React Soft Dashboard - Open-source full-stack product


✨ Full-stack React Apps

Project are built using the two-tier architecture pattern using React for the frontend part and different API servers powered by Node JS, Flask, Django.


Full-stack React Apps - generated by AppSeed.


Flask Dashboards

All admin dashboards are coded in Flask Microframework with SQLite database, authentication ORM, and deployment scripts for Docker, HEROKU



Flask Dashboard Argon - Open-Source Admin Dashboard


Django Dashboards

Simple Django starters enhanced with basic modules, authentication and deployment scripts.



Django Atlantis Dark - Open-Source Admin Panel.


Static Sites

Free & Commercial, prototyped on top of Eleventy (11ty) and Panini SSG. Tooling: Webpack, Sass/SCSS, Babel, Light-server, PostCSS, CSSnano.



Eleventy Html5Up Dopetrope - Gif animated intro.


Flask Apps

Free web apps built on top of well-known UI Kits, equipped with authentication, SQLite database, ORM, and a clean code-base.



Flask Pixel PRO - premium UI Kit migrated to Flask.


Other (Generated) Apps and Boilerplates

  • Full-Stack - two tier architecture with Vue, React frontend - MIT License
  • Nodejs, Laravel and Flask boilerplate code - MIT License

Next steps

  • Enhance the HTML parser to convert legacy HTML design to Vue, React, Angular themes
  • Generate themes for modern frameworks (GatsbyJS, Gridsome, HUGO) starting from a Bootstrap based design
  • Design migrations from legacy CSS frameworks (Bootstrap) to Bulma and Tailwind.
  • Add more boilerplates to be used in the pipeline: Django, Fastify .. you name it.

Thanks for reading! For more resources, feel free to access:

Latest comments (11)

Collapse
 
stephanreynolds profile image
Stephan Reynolds ✪

Thanks Sm0ke :) I like your posts.

Collapse
 
sm0ke profile image
Sm0ke

Ty Stephan!
🚀🚀

Collapse
 
4mitch profile image
Dima

Did you see your post was translated in Habr? :) m.habr.com/ru/company/plarium/blog...

Collapse
 
sm0ke profile image
Sm0ke

thank you for the notice!

Collapse
 
nazimboudeffa profile image
Nazim Boudeffa • Edited

Great work, we are working on a project like this to generate nodejs apps, but searching in you repositories we can see that the source code of the generator is not opensource even if you're using opensource softwares
How can we take a look at the code ?

subscribe for more

Collapse
 
sm0ke profile image
Sm0ke • Edited

Hello Nazim,
The service uses two modules embedded into the platform, not open-sourced, mostly for the commercial value.

To give you an insight, I've spent more than 1y to develop the core of the platform. Even is not obvious at first look, it was a huge amount of R&D work and continuous prototyping. If you want, you may read more on this article:
App Generator - The Modern Way

Thank you for your kind words.
Yours, .. <('_')> ..

Collapse
 
dnsnetworks profile image
DNSnetworks

Are you interested in a side contract ? Please connect with me on LinkedIn.
ShawnEbbs from @dnsnetworks

Collapse
 
sm0ke profile image
Sm0ke

Hello Shawn,
Yes, we can have a chat. See u there.
Thank you!

Collapse
 
kempsterrrr profile image
Will Kempster

This is very cool

I'm hoping get some solid Jamstack boilerplates together for myself soon so will be in really useful.

Collapse
 
geofflangenderfer profile image
Geoff Langenderfer

So you've automated parts of legacy app migration? That's pretty cool.

Collapse
 
sm0ke profile image
Sm0ke

Is not fully automated but I hope to improve the process until the end of the year to cut entirely the manual work.
The progress depends on many factors.

Thank you for your interest.