[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":442},["ShallowReactive",2],{"project-4489288":3},{"id":4,"name":5,"line":6,"line_source":7,"title":8,"url":9,"domain":10,"maker":11,"posted_at":12,"year":13,"points":14,"comments":15,"rank_in_year":16,"shown_in_year":17,"top":18,"tier":19,"category":20,"subcategory":21,"format":22,"keywords":23,"reception":27,"sentiment":28,"stance_mix":29,"scored_comments":33,"aspects":34,"strip":45,"post_text":47,"what":48,"said":118,"maker_in_thread":219,"shape":232,"grid":236,"attempts":406,"same_week":407,"maker_shows":46,"maker_hidden":435,"reader_version":436,"card":437},"4489288","Forward","MongoDB + open source e-commerce = Forward","title","Show HN: MongoDB + open source e-commerce = Forward","http:\u002F\u002Fgetfwd.com","getfwd.com","ericingram",1347028647,2012,107,70,199,1677,12,"notable","web_saas","e-commerce platform","web_app",[21,24,25,26],"mongodb","open source ecommerce","php templates","mixed",0.17,{"positive":18,"neutral":30,"mixed":31,"critical":32},13,1,4,30,{"design":35,"idea":38,"performance":39,"execution":41,"pricing":42,"privacy":43,"docs":44},{"positive":36,"critical":37},5,0,{"positive":32,"critical":31},{"positive":37,"critical":40},2,{"positive":37,"critical":37},{"positive":37,"critical":31},{"positive":37,"critical":37},{"positive":37,"critical":37},[36,46,46,36,37,46,36,37,37,36,36,36,37,31,31,36,37,46,46,37,46,31,37,37,46,46,46,46,37,46,46,37,37,46,37,46,36,36,36,46],3,null,{"problem":49,"audience":60,"pricing":68,"motivation":81,"time_to_build":47,"stack":88,"openness":115,"stage":116,"team_size":117},{"value":50,"source":51,"evidence":52},"Existing e-commerce software is rigid and hard for developers to customize","maker",[53,56],{"id":54,"by":11,"text":55},"4489296","Developer\u002Ffounder of Forward here, happy to answer questions about what it is, why, how, and take critical feedback. Devs complain endlessly about the rigid, complex mess of…",{"id":57,"by":58,"text":59},"4489477","jenius","We desperately need something like this. I just finished a large ecommerce project built on another open source system and it was so incredibly difficult to customize anything.…",{"value":61,"source":51,"evidence":62},"Developers building e-commerce sites",[63,64],{"id":54,"by":11,"text":55},{"id":65,"by":66,"text":67},"4489485","brittohalloran","Looks amazing. You should have more technical details on the site though. This is for developers so they can handle it up front. I had to dig a bit to find out it's a templating…",{"value":69,"source":51,"evidence":70},"Core code free, paid developer support options planned",[71,75,78],{"id":72,"by":73,"text":74},"4489532","knodi","Looks very cool. Where is the source code repo for Forward? I take it its public as it says \"open-source platform\" edit: nm i found the burb. \"Scheduled for public release in…",{"id":76,"by":11,"text":77},"4490002","You get at the core of the issue here, which is that we can save developers a huge amount of time with the right mix of pre-built components and dedicated developer support. All…",{"id":79,"by":11,"text":80},"4489667","I understand this sentiment. The goal of Forward is different than what you're probably used to in open source e-commerce. We believe open source is ideal for most software, but…",{"value":82,"source":51,"evidence":83},"Previous e-commerce builds were hard to customize; wanted to make building e-commerce fun again",[84,87],{"id":85,"by":11,"text":86},"4489385","I started building my own first e-commerce business around the time Magento hit beta, and the EAV (Entity Attribute Value) model is the part that killed it for me. I had ideas…",{"id":57,"by":58,"text":59},[89,96,103,109],{"value":90,"source":51,"evidence":91},"MongoDB",[92,93],{"id":54,"by":11,"text":55},{"id":94,"by":11,"text":95},"4489599","It's awesome to see that others are thinking about this stuff too, really, I'm excited you are excited. > you might even be able to expand this to administrators of the service.…",{"value":97,"source":51,"evidence":98},"PHP",[99,100],{"id":65,"by":66,"text":67},{"id":101,"by":11,"text":102},"4489560","You have a good point. We'll write a lot more technical detail over the coming weeks on our blog. I'm also writing a guest post (technical) for the MongoDB blog, so expect a lot…",{"value":104,"source":51,"evidence":105},"Smarty 3 templates",[106],{"id":107,"by":11,"text":108},"4489812","It is an MVC framework per se, but it's new and unique to this platform. It's very light, therr are about ~10 core classes. It also uses Smarty 3 (which is a big improvement over…",{"value":110,"source":51,"evidence":111},"jQuery",[112],{"id":113,"by":11,"text":114},"4490715","Only jQuery at the moment. The UI seems fast because MongoDB is very good with caching and speed in general, so it kind of feels like a client-side UI, but it's actually all…","open_source","beta","unknown",{"praise":119,"objections":142,"requests":164,"questions":180,"alternatives":199},[120,128,132],{"value":121,"source":122,"evidence":123},"Template syntax is clean and readable","commenter",[124],{"id":125,"by":126,"text":127},"4489534","whalesalad","This is incredibly cool. The template syntax you have going is awesome. Reminds me of the natural language of haml\u002Fruby with the handy pipe filter stuff of django\u002Fjinja. I can't…",{"value":129,"source":122,"evidence":130},"UI looks responsive and well designed",[131],{"id":125,"by":126,"text":127},{"value":133,"source":122,"evidence":134},"Schema-free MongoDB data model suits custom e-commerce needs",[135,139],{"id":136,"by":137,"text":138},"4489346","julien_c","Really interesting. As someone who's done some consulting in e-commerce I've always dreamt of an open source engine based on MongoDB. Magento and Prestashop are perfect examples…",{"id":140,"by":11,"text":141},"4489468","In Forward, MongoDB makes custom features easier by allowing each template to store data in different ways, without doing any database migrations or really thinking too hard…",[143,150,157],{"value":144,"source":122,"evidence":145},"MongoDB may not be safe for transactional e-commerce data",[146],{"id":147,"by":148,"text":149},"4490670","mrinterweb","I thought that e-commerce was one of the things MongoDB said it would not be good for http:\u002F\u002Fwww.mongodb.org\u002Fdisplay\u002FDOCS\u002FUse+Cases#UseCases-WhenshouldyouconsiderusingMongoDB%3F…",{"value":151,"source":122,"evidence":152},"Paid support model conflicts with open source spirit",[153],{"id":154,"by":155,"text":156},"4489504","obayesshelton","Why should a developer or a contributor pay to help develop something for the community ? seems a little too money making and less community driven.",{"value":158,"source":122,"evidence":159},"Missing variable products such as size and colour SKUs",[160],{"id":161,"by":162,"text":163},"4489804","jontas","I have recently been evaluating e-commerce platforms for an upcoming project. This looks very nice, but it seems to be missing one key piece of functionality: variable products.…",[165,169,173],{"value":166,"source":122,"evidence":167},"Publish source code",[168],{"id":72,"by":73,"text":74},{"value":170,"source":122,"evidence":171},"More technical architecture detail",[172],{"id":65,"by":66,"text":67},{"value":174,"source":122,"evidence":175},"Digital file delivery support",[176],{"id":177,"by":178,"text":179},"4490286","zoneinfinite","Will this e-commerce platform support digital file download\u002Fdelivery?",[181,185,192],{"value":182,"source":122,"evidence":183},"How is data integrity handled without transactions",[184],{"id":147,"by":148,"text":149},{"value":186,"source":122,"evidence":187},"Lack of relational data as an obstacle",[188],{"id":189,"by":190,"text":191},"4491418","ewsplat","Great effort, I'd love to see the finished product. I have been contemplating of migrating my own e-commerce platform (http:\u002F\u002Fdemo.embwebstores.com) to MongoDB and one of the new…",{"value":193,"source":122,"evidence":194},"Which JavaScript framework is used",[195],{"id":196,"by":197,"text":198},"4490646","yakshay","Looks incredibly cool. What JS library\u002Fframework is this using?",[200,205,209,213],{"value":201,"source":122,"evidence":202},"Magento",[203,204],{"id":136,"by":137,"text":138},{"id":85,"by":11,"text":86},{"value":206,"source":122,"evidence":207},"Prestashop",[208],{"id":136,"by":137,"text":138},{"value":210,"source":51,"evidence":211},"ExpressionEngine",[212],{"id":94,"by":11,"text":95},{"value":214,"source":51,"evidence":215},"Demandware",[216],{"id":217,"by":11,"text":218},"4490123","Good question. Forward will start at the small-med level because that's where our experience lies. Today we see it as comparable to the early Magento, but more developer…",{"comments":220,"answered":221,"key":222},32,16,[223,226,229],{"id":224,"text":225},"4489612","I thought about this a lot, believe me. Is it right to allow a template to have so much control? The side effect of not having it is, designers can't do anything without a…",{"id":227,"text":228},"4489711","Here's what this would look like in Forward: ``` \u003Ctable> {foreach \"\u002Faccounts\"|get as $user} \u003Ctr class=\"{cycle values=\"odd, even\"}\"> \u003Ctd class=\"user-name\">{$user.name}\u003C\u002Ftd> \u003Ctd…",{"id":230,"text":231},"4489919","Re: API endpoint, that's exactly it. Here are several equivalent ways of expressing this: ``` \u002F\u002F PHP $accounts = get(\"\u002Faccounts\"); \u002F\u002F Template {get $accounts from \"\u002Faccounts\"}…",{"commenters":233,"max_depth":234,"maker_replies":220,"first_comment_mins":31,"lifespan_hours":235},28,7,91,[237,239,243,245,247,248,250,253,254,257,259,263,266,270,271,275,276,279,283,285,287,288,289,291,294,296,299,301,304,305,308,309,311,314,317,321,325,326,329,332,334,337,338,340,342,345,348,353,355,357,358,360,361,363,365,369,371,376,378,380,382,385,387,389,391,394,396,400,402,405],[125,37,36,238,126,37],"project\u002Fpositive\u002Fdesign",[240,37,46,241,242,37],"4489595","project\u002Fneutral\u002Fdesign","randallsquared",[224,37,37,244,11,31],"maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fdesign",[246,37,46,241,126,37],"4489672",[227,37,37,241,11,31],[249,37,36,238,126,37],"4489723",[251,37,36,238,252,37],"4489857","mikelbring",[230,37,37,244,11,31],[255,37,46,241,256,37],"4490228","ricardobeat",[258,37,37,244,11,31],"4490320",[260,37,36,261,262,37],"4491198","project\u002Fpositive\u002Fidea","laktek",[264,37,37,265,11,31],"4495348","maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[267,37,37,268,269,37],"4489782","commenter\u002Fcritical\u002Fidea","nahname",[94,37,37,241,11,31],[272,37,37,273,274,37],"4490140","other\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone","rushabh",[57,31,36,261,58,37],[277,31,37,278,11,31],"4489770","maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fidea",[280,31,36,281,282,37],"4490146","maker\u002Fpositive\u002Fidea","mst",[284,31,37,265,11,31],"4490202",[286,40,37,241,11,31],"4489736",[136,46,36,261,137,37],[85,46,37,278,11,31],[147,32,31,290,148,37],"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fidea",[292,32,37,293,11,31],"4490768","maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fexecution",[295,36,37,241,11,31],"4489497",[161,297,31,298,162,37],6,"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fperformance",[300,297,37,293,11,31],"4489827",[302,297,36,303,162,37],"4489854","maker\u002Fpositive\u002Fnone",[54,234,37,278,11,31],[306,234,46,293,307,37],"4489402","davedx",[140,234,37,238,11,31],[310,234,36,303,307,37],"4504565",[312,234,31,298,313,37],"4489555","burningion",[315,234,37,316,11,31],"4489644","maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fperformance",[318,234,37,319,320,37],"4492870","other\u002Fneutral\u002Fperformance","jeremyking",[322,234,46,323,324,37],"4489897","project\u002Fneutral\u002Fidea","tommccabe",[217,234,37,278,11,31],[154,327,31,328,155,37],8,"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fpricing",[330,327,37,331,126,37],"4489592","commenter\u002Fpositive\u002Fpricing",[76,327,37,333,11,31],"maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fpricing",[335,327,37,336,282,37],"4490181","other\u002Fneutral\u002Fpricing",[79,327,37,333,11,31],[189,339,46,323,190,37],9,[341,339,37,244,11,31],"4491653",[72,343,46,344,73,37],10,"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fprivacy",[346,343,37,347,11,31],"4489856","maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fdocs",[349,350,46,351,352,37],"4489701",11,"project\u002Fmixed\u002Fidea","madarco",[354,350,37,244,11,31],"4489886",[65,18,46,356,66,37],"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fdocs",[101,18,37,293,11,31],[359,18,46,293,137,37],"4489637",[107,18,37,293,11,31],[362,18,46,293,137,37],"4489873",[364,18,37,244,11,31],"4489984",[366,30,37,367,368,37],"4490342","commenter\u002Fpositive\u002Fidea","ericcholis",[370,30,37,265,11,31],"4490393",[372,373,37,374,375,37],"4489945",14,"other\u002Fneutral\u002Fdesign","rburhum",[377,373,37,244,11,31],"4489958",[379,373,46,293,375,37],"4490052",[381,373,37,303,11,31],"4490063",[383,373,37,384,375,37],"4490105","commenter\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[177,386,46,323,178,37],15,[388,386,37,323,11,31],"4490351",[390,386,36,238,178,37],"4490700",[392,221,36,238,393,37],"4489603","tegansnyder",[395,221,37,265,11,31],"4489619",[397,398,36,303,399,37],"4490612",17,"camurban",[401,398,37,303,11,31],"4490773",[196,403,46,404,197,37],18,"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fexecution",[113,403,37,404,11,31],[],[408,413,418,422,426,431],{"id":409,"name":410,"points":411,"category":412},"4499435","aboutmybrowser.com",521,"dev_tools",{"id":414,"name":415,"points":416,"category":417},"4496647","MemStash",170,"productivity",{"id":419,"name":420,"points":421,"category":417},"4488910","Foreman",153,{"id":423,"name":424,"points":425,"category":417},"4488432","my personal news reader",108,{"id":427,"name":428,"points":429,"category":430},"4504639","Sleepio",94,"consumer_social",{"id":432,"name":433,"points":434,"category":430},"4489383","GetOutCall.com",83,false,"v2",{"id":438,"name":5,"line":6,"ai":435,"cat":20,"year":13,"points":14,"comments":15,"rec":27,"s":28,"top":18,"kw":439,"maker":11,"domain":10,"tier":19,"attempts":37,"strip":440,"url":9,"mix":441,"praise":121,"objection":144,"sub":21},4489288,[21,24,25,26],"5335035005550115033031003333033003035553",[18,30,31,32],1793990884969]