We launched the public beta of ToolJet in June 2021. Today, we are excited to release the ToolJet 1.0.
What were we waiting for?
A lot of users are using ToolJet on production environments since August and the platform did not show any stability or scalability issues. We were waiting for wrapping up one major feature before we call it 1.0.
We are today making public the ToolJet developer platform along with tooljet command-line tool. ToolJet developer platform allows any JavaScript developer to build and publish plugins for ToolJet. For this phase one, developers will be able to build connectors for ToolJet. For example, building a ToolJet connector for BigQuery takes only 30 minutes including integration tests.
We made this possible with the help of our command-line tool tooljet. Our command-line tool can bootstrap the file structure for plugins, add npm dependencies for the plugins and even run tests for specific plugins.
Since our launch, we have been getting a lot of contributions from developers around the world. Our developer platform will make it easy for any JavaScript developer to extend ToolJet using plugins. This was one of the reasons for us migrating the ToolJet server from Ruby to Node.js last year. We wanted to open up our platform for the growing JavaScript community.
Plugins are useful for our users as they do not have to wait for the core team to build the connectors that they need. Imagine using a closed source product where the users are at the mercy of the company to build features and fix bugs. Will they even care if the extension will not be used by the majority of their customers?
What else is new and what changed since the beta launch?
a) Ported ToolJet server from Ruby to Node.js
Yes, the server was built using Ruby when we launched ToolJet first. Right after the launch, we ported the server to Node.js. This has helped us leverage the contributions of the amazing and active JavaScript community. This has also helped us build the developer platform for a larger number of developers. We've written in detail about this in another blog post.
JavaScript is the most popular language of 2021.
b) Plugin based architecture
We altered the architecture to support extensibility. We built a plugin system so that any JavaScript developer will be able to extend ToolJet easily. For example, a simple plugin for connecting ToolJet with BigQuery can be built in less than 30 minutes.
We believe our open-source and plugin-based approach helps the engineering teams to customise our low-code framework as per their requirements.
c) Team collaboration features
Real-time collaboration between the team members is now possible with the conversations feature of ToolJet. Users can now tag their team members and comment on the canvas to collaborate.
d) Templates by ToolJet
Now you can choose from dozens of templates instead of creating applications from scratch. Templates even include full-fledged database viewer apps for PostgreSQL and MySQL.
e) More data sources
We launched first with 7 data sources. Now we have integrations with more than 20 data sources. We've even added support for cloud storage like AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage and Minio. But that's not all, our new architecture will enable us to build and test new data sources easily.
f) More UI widgets
We launched a public beta with 12 UI widgets. Now we have more than 35 widgets. We now have widgets for picking files, list layout, pagination, timer, tags and statistic.
g) Better application builder
We redesigned the application builder to make it super easy to use. We've also added a bunch of keyboard shortcuts for actions like undo, redo, delete widget and more. The focus of the redesign was the usability of the editor.
h) Support for running custom JavaScript snippets
You can now run JavaScript code from within ToolJet. This adds to the flexibility of the framework. Libraries like momentjs, papaparse, lodash, etc are supported within the snippets.
i) Debugger
Runtime errors that happen in your applications are now logged in the debugger. If a query failed or if a widget ran into an error, you can debug it easily using the debugger.
j) User groups and permissions
Permissions for every app and actions like user creation, folder creation, etc can now be controlled on a user group level as well as on an organization level.
And obviously a lot of many other features, bug fixes and improvements. But that's not all, exciting new features will be released in the coming weeks.
Checkout ToolJet v1 on GitHub — https://github.com/ToolJet/ToolJet
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