Isn't Clojure overkill for small web apps?

[Phylax]

@tobyloxy

Sounds like your client edits their site their own account on the Directus website

So far I’ve only used self-hosted instances of Directus. My clients have their own shared hosting plans where I’m running all three pieces: The Directus instance, the underlying SQL Database and the Clojurescript app (Macchiato). I haven’t used the Directus Cloud so far. It might be faster for frontend-querying, but for server-side rendering I expect self-hosting to have a performance edge. Also that way I can query the DB directly when I feel the need.

@tobyloxy

their website pulls all the data it needs to display from the Directus API.

This is exactly what I’ve been doing (for the most part) – probably not the first thing you’d choose Clojure(script) for, but a good way to get some first real world experience. My approach still makes for a good amount of clojure code, so it’s only cost-effective for stuff you cannot just throw a Wordpress plugin at.

@tobyloxy

For other types of apps (i.e. aside from content sites) it seems like you could also use Directus as a sort of replacement for a Django-style admin panel, in that it gives you a GUI view of your database?

“Database GUI” pretty much sums it up, so I assume you can use it for anything where an easy way to edit SQL comes in handy.
I’ve never used Django, so can’t really compare the two. Looking at what I could dig up just now it seems that Django offers more fine-grained control over the details of the admin panel – at the expense of setup-easiness (maybe not simplicity ). Setting up Directus, once installed, is mostly a point-and-click adventure: The SQL relations are created together with the Interfaces. One should know how relational databases work and have an idea of how one wants to query the API, but that’s pretty much it. I have yet to write a single line of PHP or Angular for any Directus-Project.

@tobyloxy

How did you come to choose Directus out of all the other options for headless CMSs? I just had quick google and it seems like there are a huge range of options.

I’ll try to make this short since ultimately the choice was more or less arbitrary. My main constraints at the time were

1. Self-hosted
2. PHP-based (I was unsure if I’d find a shared hosting space offering anything else in Germany)
3. SQL-based
4. WYSIWYG HTML editor for my clients.
5. Integrated Thumbnailer

A nice guy on on StackExchange pointed me at http://cmsmatrix.org/, where I pretty much just stumbled across Directus. After a quick chat with Ben Haynes I was optimistic about getting it to work with a Reagent App, which it did just fine (only later did I find out about Macchiato and switched to server-side rendering).

Maybe some other CMS might have served my purposes just as well; in my case Directus happened to make the use of clojurescript viable for the small content sites I had to start with in order to get a feel for the matter.