Datasette Apps: Host custom HTML applications inside Datasette

llumpa about 4 hours ago 17 commentsRead Article on simonwillison.net

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Discussion (17 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

anitil•about 3 hours ago

When I've needed something like this in the past I've spun up simple HTML pages and used the json endpoint that all datasette instances come with [0]. I like this new pattern much better, as it keeps your app and data in one place (I remember having some issue with this at the time, though I can't remember what the actual issue was)

So I imagine we could now load some data in to sqlite, design some HTML also loaded in to the db, and deploy. Although looking at the source, it seems like stored apps are expected to be managed by the plugin itself, but I'm sure there's a way around that

[0] Eg from one of the examples - https://datasette.io/legislators/-/query.json?sql=select+*+f... . If you strip the '.json' you get the html view. For what it's worth there's also a '.csv' version.

simonw•about 1 hour ago

I'm going to think about how Datasette Apps can work with the apps themselves stored on a filesystem so they can be revision controlled using Git.

I have an idea for a way to edit them through Datasette and have them backed up to Git via a separate mechanism, but having them on disk would be a whole lot more convenient.

Filed an issue here: https://github.com/datasette/datasette-apps/issues/30

anitil•18 minutes ago

Interesting idea, I know there's the fsdir [0] table-valued function / module that allows loading from disk, so it should be possible to modify that or hard-code base list of paths or something

[0] https://sqlite.org/src/file/ext/misc/fileio.c, it allows you to read a directory recursively in the cli (`select * from fsdir("./");`)

Edit: It allows upwards traversals (`select * from fsdir("../../../../etc/passwd");`), so beware

simonw•15 minutes ago

Wow, I didn't know about that one. SQLite never ceases to surprise.

I'm sticking with the Python bundled sqlite3 though so I'm not in a good place to take advantage of that one.

jacobgold•about 4 hours ago

It is pretty cool that we have browser features like this to rely on.

I remember writing code in the bad old days to parse HTML tags and allowlist specific attributes. Now browsers have a much better solution baked in.

But it still makes me a bit nervous. Seems like a very small bug could sneak in. This is a good example of where I would reach for Fable to double check the implementation and have a lot of extra tests.

(nit: would be nice if the chat box treated Enter and Shift+Enter the way these other companies have trained my brain, but maybe that is a deliberate choice.)

simonw•about 1 hour ago

In the three short days we had access to Fable I did have it run a review, and it spotted an issue for me to fix.

Thankfully GPT-5.5 is really strong on security stuff too. I wouldn't have dared build this without a whole lot of Opus/GPT-assisted prototyping and testing along the way.

hankbond•about 3 hours ago

Wow this is very similar to the direction im taking with my new project https://github.com/hank-bond/uix (warning the code base is certainly not messy but the application is barely usable for anything as of this post).

Here the goal is to be a self-assembling harness (akin to pi) but focusing on duplex human-agent interactivity over rendered HTML "apps". To start, it's focused more on the "please review this PR and then generate a one-page report" with the ability to write comments in the actual report that automatically get sent back to the agent. The end goal is closer to offering a substrate for less technical people to be able to build personal applications like

- an interactive wiki maintainer: chat with the agent about an article, pull out sections, append/create concepts in the wiki with the new info - agent code harness: agent tabs to the left, chat in middle, code diffs on the right (like the superset/commander class of apps)

Anyway, I'm really into the "self assembling" class of software where everything is basically just an SDK + Agent. I think we might actually be ushering in a new era of "personal computing" in that it's less friction than ever to personalize your setup to your whims. Anyway, thats the goal I'm reaching for.

It seems many others are coalescing on this idea at the same time, so it must just be in the aether.

ai_fry_ur_brain•about 3 hours ago

People that overuse LLMs I notice all build the same things and have the same ideas. Its one of the many reasons I avoid them, it kinda leads people into this average group where creativity is dead and there's a kinda hive mind controlling them.

Ive witnessed it many times now, im positive this phenomenon exists.

xgulfie•about 4 hours ago

Why people feel the need to overload terms like "datasette" I'll never know

tadfisher•about 4 hours ago

I think the current meaning has quite successfully replaced the original usage. Unless you typed this on a Commodore VIC-20, I suppose.

simonw•about 1 hour ago

I learned to program on a C64 and one of the first programs I wrote myself was an incredible basic "database" (really just a program that could store and then return simple fielded data.)

I named my database management software Datasette as an homage to the C64. I also figured it would be a unique name that would be easy to search for...

... jokes on me, it turns out the retro computing C64 community is way more active than I expected and there are still plenty of people taking about Datasette tape drives online, 30+ years after they stopped being manufactured and sold.

DANmode•about 3 hours ago

I can’t even parse what you’re complaining about. Could you elaborate?

jayknight•about 3 hours ago

I'm assuming he's talking about the old hardware data cassette vs the software project of the save name?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette vs

https://datasette.io/

vermilingua•about 2 hours ago

My favourite Datassette is the electronic artist.

https://datassette.bandcamp.com/

https://musicforprogramming.net/

DANmode•about 3 hours ago

I’m assuming they’re just taking about the word dataset.

Either way feels ridiculous, but the human in me wants to know which it is ^_^

da_grift_shift•20 minutes ago

    10 PRINT "HAVE YOU TRIED READING IT AGAIN?"
    20 GOTO "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48594798"