Our main goal while redesigning the Appwrite console was to improve the user experience in line with the needs and requirements of developers looking for a BaaS (Backend as a Service) solution. While keeping our core values such as simplicity and consistency in mind, we attempted to understand the essential problems developers faced in the previous version of the console.
With the collaboration of our developer community, we gathered feedback and prioritized a few updates to the Databases screens.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the changes we made.
Databases and collections
With Appwrite’s Databases Service, you can create multiple databases. Each database can contain many collections. The Databases and Collections screens have been revamped to make it easier for developers to detect disabled collections and easily copy databases and collections IDs.
New permissions
Permissions can be complicated, we know! That is why we designed a simpler way to manage them in the Appwrite console. Now you can switch a toggle to enable or disable Document Security. If security is enabled, you can update your permissions at the document level. If security is disabled, you can update your permissions at the collection level.
These permissions can be granted to anyone, all guests, all users, or specific users or teams. We’ve even added a setting that enables developers to create custom permissions. Easy, right?
Document creation
Creating attributes is still required before creating a document since they define its structure and help the Appwrite API validate input from your users. Once your attributes have been set, you can create your documents using a simple two-step process. For the first step, you will need to create the document’s data, which means filling in all of the attribute fields you set up earlier. Next, you will be able to set permissions, depending on whether you have enabled document security.
Documents overview
If you have a large table of documents with many attributes, finding what you need in the documents overview screen can be very difficult. In the previous console, if you had 10 or more attributes, there was no way to tell which document you were looking at without a lot of horizontal scrolling. With the new console design, the ID column is sticky. That way you can always see the document ID and copy it easily to use in your code.
Attributes and indexes
Your attributes and indexes play essential roles in your projects. We revamped the screens for both and added a menu to allow for quick actions such as opening an overview, creating an index for a specific attribute, and deleting attributes or indexes from the table.
What’s next?
We may have overhauled our console design, but we are far from finished. Design is an iterative process after all. We are working on further improvements to the Databases screens such as filtering and searching for documents, as well as deleting multiple attributes and/or indexes at once.
Thank you for being a part of our journey as we strive to create the best developer experience. We hope you enjoy these changes to the Appwrite console. As always, we’re more than happy to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment, reach out on Discord, or create a GitHub discussion.
Check out our release on 🚀 Product Hunt or our 💻 GitHub repository
Until next time!
