are there any web application designers like Appian/Salesforece?

Question

So i want to develop a simple web application, which will basically be a basic form which on submission will allow to make an external api request. So are there any application designers that can allow to do that with minimalistic code. Appian for example has an interface/application designer that lets you drag and drop a UI interface and build a workflow, make api calls externally or to a database. So like that are there any other apps that allow to do something similar (make api calls/build ui easily/store in databse)? Any other suggestions are also welcome!

Answer 1

It heavily depends on the API as well as the kind of task you´re trying to achieve. Here´s just a few examples and considerations. (All the below supposes that we´re talking about Web-Based APIs).

• If the API requires authentication of some sort and the user authenticates himself: A simple HTTP file with JavaScript to send the request will do the job

• If the API requires authentication but you authenticate for all the users: You will need a backend application that does the API request since you need something secure where you can put your Auth-Details for the API. Classic PHP or NodeJS in combination with a served HTTP file for the form itself would work without any JavaScript (depends on the API definitions)

• If the API does not require authentication maybe a simple HTML form would work

If you want to write to a database you can have a look at something like https://directus.io/. They allow building a database with a UI and they automatically generate a Web-API which you can then feed by your forms. If the end-user is known to you Directus actually allows users to log in and fill the database with forms that you can visually design but this is rather for employees entering data into an internal database than customers submitting their contact data to you

From my personal experience, all the UI-Tools that promise to integrate with REST APIs make it really hard to do so since every API is different and there is no real standard for them.