Creating a notion clone

Technical Help
1

Are you using our SaaS platform (Baserow.io) or self-hosting Baserow?

SaaS

What are the exact steps to reproduce this issue?

Hi,
Im trying to create a notion clone, where basically i want to enable users to define their own tables, and table column definitions.
To do that i want to integrate Baserow API and for each user i will generate a data base that will be integrate to his account alone where he can access the columns and column types.
I will i
1.Is that possible
2. Is there some example project who does something like that
3. Is there maybe a custom UI component that i can integrate that allows something like that?

Thanks!

2

@frederikdc do you recall anyone else building a similar use case with Baserow?

3

Hi,

Short answer on the the three questions: no.

Long answers:

  • Baserow itself is a database platform. So, the API allows you to create databases, tables, add and remove fields,… Actually, since Baserow is developed API first, all actions you do in Baserow are actually API calls. You can check the full documentation at Baserow API spec
  • This means that it is technically possible to create your own tables and fields through the API, the only question is why you want to do this? Baserow is build on top of Postgres, so you would build something on top of Baserow.
  • There are organizations that have white labeled Baserow to embed it in their own SaaS solution, but not in a way that they only use the API’s for communication. They more use Baserow as the admin backend on their own frontend solution.
4

Hi @frederikdc ,
Thanks for the quick reply.
If you are familiar with notion UI, then you know users are able to create their own DB’s, Tables. This functionality requires defining dynamic tables structure that changes according to the user request, handling migrations and incorrect data in my backend if i implement it myself.

Using BaseRow here handles it more simply, just overriding the difficulties of manually implementing dynamic logic to all column types, migrations, handling removing data from rows that their columns we’re deleted and more.

That is why i though about implementing this using React Data Grid in frontend and integrating baserow into it, to allow my users to have notion like functionality defining their own custom table data.

Im failing to see where this fails and why is that not a good idea in your opinion.
Thanks for the response!
Best,
Tomer

5

Hi @frederikdc , @olgatrykush Any thoughts on my previous message?
Best,
Tomer

6

It depends on your exact use case, but it just seems like a lot of work to me to solve the problem of incorrect data in the backend. Is a middleware layer that prevents this not an easier solution?

But again, this all depends on the complexity of you use case