It's similar to https://jsonbin.io (which was an inspiration!), but focuses on the second step of prototyping with data - once you're editing JSON online, how do you make sure you don't break your app? npoint.io lets you enforce a structure using JSON schema (http://json-schema.org).
More background info: http://alexzirbel.com/npoint
Also, it's open source! https://www.github.com/azirbel/npoint
All feedback is super welcome. Also happy to answer any questions here.
Watch out with providing a hosted version of something like this with totally untrusted user input. JSON schema allows for arbitrary regexes for field validation which means a malicious user could easily bring down the site with a nasty regex[1]. Not a concern for anything privately hosted but sadly there are plenty of jerks in the world.
[1]: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Regular_expression_Denial_of...
I can understand why there is good reason for the data to never change, but if your product gets popular, or you are unlucky, then this could turn out to be a bad design choice i.e. Bob copies and pastes data containing customer PII in instead of the data they meant to include.
An option for data to be deleted, even if it's after multiple prompts, or a streamlined support flow.
I was building a pretty simple charting app that used React and Redux, so the structure of a chart was 100% defined via a JSON "state".
I didn't want to bother with a server so I just stored the state in browser localstorage.
BUT when I put the app online via static hosting, I needed to give users a way of deeplinking to and sharing a diagram they created.
Could I use n:point via API to set and get json state and then add your identifiers in an anchor tag like:
Here's an example of charting data, using npoint.io as the data storage "backend":
https://beta.observablehq.com/@azirbel/npoint-io-charting-de...
If you made a charting app that used an anchor tag to load data like you described, and made the resulting chart embeddable, I'd actually be interested in using it to power charts in blog posts. Cool idea.
(Kidding, of course...)
I think it's unlikely that this site can be monetized, so I don't have my hopes up. The clearest direction would be to move up the "backend-as-a-service" spectrum into Headless CMS land (which I have a diagram for here: http://alexzirbel.com/npoint). But I think it would be hard to balance that with the quick setup / unstructured data nature of the project.
One feature (maybe a premium feature) I'd love to add is form-based data editing. Theoretically you could generate the right kind of input fields (text, date, number) from the JSON schema and expose that as alternative editing interface. That would make the tool more like a CMS.
I'm building a service that makes it possible to quickly create reusable content objects using Trello. The flow is: you write your content objects as cards in Trello, then you hit my service to get an array of self-contained JSON objects.
In terms of monetization, I'm building the service on stdlib.com. This means that I can charge a very small fee for each API request. (My service is not intended to be called from front end code.) Each user will also have an allowance of free calls. And I've already open-sourced the core functionality [1]. Definitely open to suggestions on this approach, though.
I keep thinking about adding support for schema validation. Your project has given me more to think about on that front! However, my immediate goal is to get the MVP ready to share.
Right now the MVP is live, but the landing page is not done yet. Feel free to get in touch if you're interested in more details - my email is in my profile.
http://schemaform.io/examples/bootstrap-example.html
It's quite cool actually (depending on how much you love/hate Angular though).
Something like that might be good to have as a premium feature, albeit I would think not something you could charge an arm and a leg though... or perhaps you can, if you add something like schema versioning perhaps?
