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mui / toolpad

Toolpad: Full stack components and low-code builder for dashboards and internal apps.
https://mui.com/toolpad/
MIT License
1.28k stars 283 forks source link

how MUI toolpad is different from other tools ? #1921

Closed Prajapati-developer closed 1 year ago

Prajapati-developer commented 1 year ago

This is not a bug but I want to understand.

prakhargupta1 commented 1 year ago

Hi @Prajapati-developer the biggest differences are:

  1. You can use your code editor to build/edit a Toolpad app. This removes the need to write code again when you can just copy from an existing codebase. This approach also accommodates AI responses.
  2. You can extend an existing app by importing toolpad as a package.
  3. You get a simpler/visual way of building an app by drag-dropping components on canvas.
  4. You get MUI Datagrid pro for free in Toolpad.
  5. Exiting out of Toolpad is also not that difficult.

Soon we'll allow importing other node modules while writing queries, custom components in Toolpad.

We can talk more on a call to help you move faster with your use case. Feel free to block a time: https://calendly.com/prakhar-mui/toolpad?back=1&month=2023-04

Prajapati-developer commented 1 year ago

Hello @prakhargupta1 ,

thank you for your quick response I am asking that there are other tools also available like retool and others so, what is the major difference between them & MUI Toolpad.

prakhargupta1 commented 1 year ago

Ok, those were more like pros of Toolpad. Here are the key differences:

  1. Retool and the likes are more like saas and require some learning as the app is built on the tool itself. All custom code is written in the tool. So it puts a dev in a lock-in situation. As explained earlier, such is not the case with Toolpad.
  2. From a security perspective devs still hesitate in sharing secrets for critical apps on a 3rd party tool. As Toolpad works from your local, the env variables never leave your system.
  3. Git sync experience is not good in these tools and feels like an overkill.
  4. Since you can't access the codebase of a Retool app, you can't see the file system. You can just export the application definition as a json. While Toolpad allows you to view all files of the app. Hand-editing these files using code editor functionalities works very well.
  5. By making Toolpad only focus on the UI and data handling, we have tried not to reinvent the wheel. We believe that user would want to use their own version control system and deployment infrastructure.
  6. Retool is not open-source.
  7. Importing your own components works better on Toolpad.
oliviertassinari commented 1 year ago

@Prajapati-developer Let us know if you have more questions.

From my perspective, the main difference is that with Toolpad, apps are built locally, alongside the rest of the frontend and backend code, which Toolpad can directly integrate & extend.