Indeed, making this really 100% SQL-only had very interesting and unexpected consequences. I see people who were initially far away from programming circles creating GitHub accounts just to post on the discussion page.
I'm currently working on some new exciting features. I hope we can push the frontier of what can be done in SQL even further...
``` select 'checkbox' as component, 'Terms and conditions' as label, true as required; ```
I'm thinking "What would the workflow of a sql-enthusiast be, to build that page".
I think they'd want todo this first:
``` select * from sqlpage.components; ```
which would list the `name` of each component. Which then takes me to:
``` INSERT INTO sqlpage.dom SET name = 'checkbox', label = 'Terms and conditions ', required = TRUE FROM sqlpage.components ```
(or VALUES syntax for INSERT)
This would allow you to re-order your dom, update dom entries, etc. Very similar to jsx, but instead of jsx creating in-memory javascript objects, it's sqlpage's sql creating rows in a postgres table. Then the SQLPage virtualdom gets transformed into actual html.
Just a thought, :)
The "select 'checkbox' as component" is just an example, but nothing prevents you from creating a my_form table and writing it as "select * from my_form" instead.
You don't need any special feature from SQLPage for that.
this would be a convincing feature for me
The challenge as I see it with enabling analysts to build websites is that you need to build abstractions to get from familiar (SQL, yaml) - the language of analytics, to new (HTML, CSS, JS) - the language of the web browser
As one of the maintainers of Evidence (https://evidence.dev), one of the things I’ve often considered is how accessible our syntax is to analysts. Our syntax combines SQL and Markdown, with MDX style components e.g. <Component/>
The </> are inherently webdev-ey, and I do think they put off potential users.
On the flip-side, by adhering to web standards, you get extensibility out of the box, and working out what to do is just a Google search away.
Anyway, thanks for the thought provoking piece.