ayazhan

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04871 another recursive based model

got it. thank you for your feedback, i really appreciate it!

Totally, i'll reach out!

these are great examples, thanks for sharing! the second one is particularly interesting. python seems like a perfect fit for that use case.

are there any limitations you encounter with NiceGUI? do you need a user permission feature or does each user get admin access? can you see it scaling up easily?

thanks for the heads up!

i feel like the challenge would be to find a subset of customizations that would work for most users.

that’s a fair point.

what would be the minimum set of customization required to satisfy the majority of the tweaks requested by internal users?

would it be sufficient to offer themes (dark/light modes), a custom logo, and control over font sizes? or, is it more fundamental, like adding your own css and changing the size/positioning of components?

NiceGUI looks interesting, reminds me of reflex.dev a little bit.

what kind of apps are you building with it?

yes, that’s us. glad to see you remember our previous iteration :)

internal app builder is certainly a challenging market to break into, but we believe we have something interesting to offer and are quite optimistic about our approach.

were you a customer of the previous dropbase version (csv to database)?

thanks again for your interest, it is always appreciated!

correct. internal apps are usually built by developers for internal users. examples include processing refunds, updating customer information, managing user permissions, triggering batch jobs, and etc.

the goal of internal apps is to optimize tasks that are tedious and time consuming, but not too common for an off-the-shelf product to be available.

since the internal apps aren't the main product developers work on in a company, they prefer to build them quickly with minimal resources.

internal tools usually run on a server, as does Dropbase

thank you for sharing! i think we'll get there eventually and add components beyond tables, such as charts and maps. current focus is to get the table+sidebar experience right first. the thing that differentiates us from dashboarding tools is that with us an end user can trigger a task that gets or acts on data (as opposed to rearrangement of existing data on ui).

could you elaborate on cron jobs being a pain point? would you use it as a scheduled task to fetch/prepare data before user logs in or let users schedule jobs on their own to run async? any use cases you could share?

this looks great, thanks for sharing! i’ll check it out. we are also big fans of Pydantic and FastAPI

thanks Kelvin! :)

i second that. for external-facing tools, you probably want something custom, branded, and more flexible. when it comes to internal tools, you typically want something quick to get the job done.

at dropbase, our focus was on enabling developers to get stuff done efficiently. we noticed that for 90% of internal tool use cases, you only need a table and modal to get user input. so we focused on developing those. while it may not be sufficient for external apps, for internal tools, it should cover most of that you need

yes, it's a bit inconvenient, but user management and ui component definitions are managed by the dropbase server. because of this, we need an account, with a token to identify and authenticate a workspace

frankly we're new to open source. and technically we're not really open source. we wanted to take advantage of the self hosted nature of data processing worker, which are safety, extensibility, and developer trust. that's why the worker is under the source-available model.

as we grow and learn, if we get interest from the community to contribute, we'll definitely consider opening more of the codebase.

thanks for the feedback! i'm curious, how critical are graphs for your internal tools and what are some examples of their use?

hey everyone, Ayazhan here. i'm a co-founder at Dropbase.

i would like to highlight a feature called "State and Context".

as python developers, we want to focus the logic part and don't worry too much about the ui. however, we still want the ui to look good. to accommodate that, we've introduced the concepts of State and Context (that are popular in frontend development) to python functions.

with State, you can access the data that the user is interacting with (row selection, form inputs, ect)

with Context, you can control the ui and communicate with the user (show messages, hide components, ect)

you can learn more about these features here:

https://docs.dropbase.io/concepts/state-and-context

hey guys,

im one of the founders. we’re really excited for this new version of the product.

with data validation feature db managers can add a validation layer for application level checks that are hard to enforce within a database (we know checks are also available in most dbs, though they’re rarely added). and we’re making the process of adding validation checks very easy.

we also added a git-like feature for db so admins can easily review and resolve merge conflicts.

let us know what you think!

i was born and raised in Kazakhstan, but left after high school. i've been following the situation in Kazakhstan and recent events give me a glimpse of hope.

Kazakhstan, just like any other post-soviet country, suffers from a host of problems inherited from the USSR, such as.

- corruption

- inefficient political system

- erased identity

- soviet mentality

in addition, our geopolitics is quite challenging. not only do we border 2 major powers that often in disputes over territories (Russia and China), but we're also a landlocked country heavily relying on the very same neighbours for exports. i'm not even talking about our water insecurity.

but we also got lucky in some ways.

- Kazakhstan is blessed with natural resources (such as oil), which helped us a lot throughout the early 2000s

- fertility rate is above replacement (2.6-2.9)

- we have direct access to some of the biggest markets (Russia, China)

- our borders were not chopped up to plant disputes with neighbours

in theory, if we play our cards right, we could come out on top. our population is around 19 million, so agriculture, mining and services alone should be enough to provide jobs. Kazakhstan is already moving in the right direction to facilitate business development (ranks 25 for easy doing business [1])

i've been following the youth of Kazakhstan and have to admit that they are way more patriotic and optimistic than my generation. they're fluent in Kazakh, open minded and more politically savvy. our culture is also flourishing (Kazakh songs consistently accumulate more views on youtube than the population of the country) and our national identity is strengthening.

i see there is some criticism over Tokayev's proposals and it's easy to be skeptical after 30 years of a repressive regime. however, i still dare to hope. prosperity is doable and we simply need a better government with a fair justice system and distributed power. if the government manages to stay away from people's business and just provide a solid platform for stable life, i think we can go far. this aligns with the "Just and Fair Kazakhstan" plan proposed by the president and i'm happy to see it.

1. https://archive.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings

Dropbase (W20) | https://www.dropbase.io | REMOTE (PT through ET Timezones) | Backend and Full-stack engineers.

Dropbase makes it easy to go from CSV and Excel files to live databases. Data teams use Dropbase to collect data, apply cleaning step and load it to a database that's ready to connect your existing analytics and visualization tools.

We are currently a team of 4 but growing quickly. We originally launched here on Hackernews (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24189582) and had an amazing response from the community. Since then, we’ve grown to thousands of users and got backing from an institutional VC.

We are looking for a Full-stack/Backend Engineer to join our team. You will be one of the first full-time engineers to join and work directly with the founders. You can expect a lot of autonomy, ownership and have a large impact on the product.

Our stack:

- Python 3.x (Flask, Pandas) - JavaScript (React) - AWS

If that sounds interesting to you and a good match for your experience, please reach out!

More info

Backend Engineer position: https://www.notion.so/castodia/Software-Engineer-Backend-f91...

Full-stack Engineer position: https://www.notion.so/castodia/Software-Engineer-Fullstack-a...

Apply here: https://airtable.com/shr3TUf0FcfUvZFqA

Check us out: https://www.dropbase.io

PostgREST links are broken. Here is the correct link: http://postgrest.org/en/v7.0.0/

Yes, there is a bug with error messages, we'll push an update with a fix later today.

If you want, you can also share the csv with us and we'll troubleshoot it on our end. just email us at hello@dropbase.io

thank you for advice! we'll consider it

it's on our roadmap and will try to add support for multiple files and zip in the upcoming release

- we use pandas to process data and load it to Postgres using .to_sql (https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/reference/api/p...). for incremental loads, we set "if_exists" to "append". we're working to add more flexibility to load function, so you can specify how to load your data, handle conflicts, and so on. we're open for suggestions

- PostgREST is great. We are not sponsors at the moment, but looking to do this when we can!

Thank you so much!

Yes, we will offer non-profit and academic plans.

I agree, parquet cannot be ignored and we're planning to support it.

What would you be interested more in: loading data from parquet files or converting and storing your data in parquet?

Spreadsheet view for all your data is on our roadmap. Integrating into user's file system is something we'll definately explore, it sounds quite interesting. These are great suggestions, thank you!

yes, you can run regular sql queries on your database where you can join/group tables.

if you want to join/group static files (like csv/excel), then you'd need import your files into dropbase DB first and then run sql query on that DB.

let me know if this answered your questions.

Hey HN,

We're happy to introduce Dropbase 2.0! It's a tool that helps you bring offline files, such as CSV, Excel, and JSON files, into Postgres database. You can also process your data before uploading it using a spreadsheet-like interface or by writing a custom Python script. Once your data is in the database, you can query it using any third party tool (credentials will be provided). You can also access your data via REST API (powered by PostgREST) or create custom endpoints to serve a more specific use case.

A bit about the tech:

Currently, we support .csv, .json, .xls, .xlsx files. For data processing, we use Pandas, so if you are comfortable using Python, you can write your own custom functions to process the data. We also give you a free shared Postgres database to test the tool with (your data is isolated and hidden from others). Each one of these databases come with an instance of PostgREST preinstalled, so you can query your database using REST API ([http://postgrest.org/en/v7.0.0/](http://postgrest.org/en/v7....). You can also generate an access token with an expiry date to share your data with others.

There are many more features that we baked into the product. Come check it out, it's open for HN community.