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Poor Man's Back End-as-a-Service (BaaS), Similar to Firebase/Supabase/Pocketbase

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200 points dcu | 1 comments | 03 Jul 25 15:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.375s | source
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TekMol ◴[03 Jul 25 16:05 UTC] No.44456461[source]▶
Do we still need a back-end, now that Chrome supports the File System Access API on both desktop and mobile?

I have started writing web apps that simply store the user data as a file, and I am very pleased with this approach.

It works perfectly for Desktop and Android.

iOS does not allow for real Chrome everywhere (only in Europe, I think), so I also offer to store the data in the "Origin private file system" which all browsers support. Fortunately it has the same API, so implementing it was no additional work. Only downside is that it cannot put files in a user selected directory. So in that mode, I support a backup via an old-fashioned download link.

This way, users do not have to put their data into the cloud. It all stays on their own device.

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1. thomascountz ◴[03 Jul 25 16:23 UTC] No.44456656[source]▶
TIL! I enjoy building cloudless apps and have been relying on localstorage for persistence with an "export" button. This is exactly what I've been looking for.

A lot of what I've read about local-first apps included solving for data syncing for collaborative features. I had no idea it could be this simple if all you need is local persistence.