Kinto — the project we are working on since quite some time now — can do a bunch of different things for you and be useful in many different situations.
However, we found out that it is really hard to understand at a glance what it can do, and where it could help you build your projects in a better way.
Here is an attempt to fix this.
Kinto is not a framework
First and foremost, Kinto is not a framework. It doesn't try to provide a way to structure your projects for you. It is meant to replace the storage layer of your application, or more accurately, the synchronisation abilities of your applications.
Said differentely, you store your data locally for your application and Kinto will make this data available to different devices (or users).
That means that you can use Kinto with React, Angular, JQuery (in the JavaScript world) or any framework (or no framework at all) in any language. Kinto abstracts away the synchronisation of the application's data.
Hmm, and what about my use-case?
The idea here is mainly to show you what is already possible with very little efforts using the tooling we have put together. You can leverage the Kinto.js client, as it allows you to work with Kinto really easily, but ultimately you don't need it. It's just here to make it really easy for you to integrate with the HTTP APIs exposed by Kinto.
Synchronise your data
If there is one thing to take way with you, that would be this: if you need to synchronise your data between different devices, there are chances that Kinto is a good fit.
That's useful if you want to synchronise data between devices, and also between users. You have the data on one location, and you want it in a different one.
With Kinto.js, this is as simple as calling .sync() on the Kinto instance.
const tasks = new Kinto({
remote: "https://demo.kinto-storage.org/v1"
}).collection("tasks");
tasks
.create({label: "A first task", done: false})
.then(_ => tasks.sync());
Storage
Okay, I lied. You are not only syncing your data between different locations, you're actually storing it somewhere, on a location of your choice.
You can access this data later on when you need it. The cool thing here is that you can access this data using the HTTP API (that speaks JSON).
We tried very hard to make the protocol as easy as possible, and are pretty happy with our current design, but if you have ideas on how to make it evolve, we would be really happy to hear them!
Here's an example of how to retrieve your data using the HTTPie client.
$ http get https://demo.kinto-storage.org/v1/buckets/default/collections/kinto_demo_calendar/records --auth="null:notsecret"
{
"data": [
{
"end": "2016-01-07T09:30:00",
"id": "1f5d1390-2647-442d-8bc4-5ecc6a4f8beb",
"last_modified": 1451997254315,
"start": "2016-01-07T09:00:00",
"title": "Visite maison"
},
{
"end": "2016-01-06",
"id": "0dadb484-259b-482d-8cb8-0e94d743d1c6",
"last_modified": 1451997234471,
"start": "2016-01-05",
"title": "RDV Osthéo"
}
]
}
Permissions
Sometimes you want your data to remain yours, and some other times you want to share it with friends. It really depends what the data is.
One of the reasons we built Kinto was to control who has access to what on a per record level. Without getting too much in the details, the data stored in Kinto is organised into three concepts: Buckets contains collections wich in turn contain records.
It's then possible to apply permissions to each container, and all children will be impacted.
You can read more on our documentation about this if you want.
Real-time notifications
What happens when the data evolves? Let's say you are on one device doing geo-mapping and someone else is doing the same thing on their own device. You want to have these two devices in sync, and as such they need to know when new data is issued by any other device.
That's when real-time notifications are useful. Kinto itself doesn't decide for you which notification system you should use, but it can integrate easily with any notification system.
We tried to ease your life by providing some solutions to integrate with pusher and with WebPush, but you're free to use your own notification system.
Some examples
Let's take some examples. A few weeks ago we prepared a bunch of demos showcasing what can Kinto do and how easy it is. In order to do that, we decided to take a few applications we liked that are usually not doing synchronisation and sharing. There are many out there, and we chose just a few of them:
- A tool to build forms, which makes a great alternative to Google Forms.
- A JQuery calendar application which let you add new events and see them on a calendar.
- A leaflet map where you can add new markers and move them easily.
- A TODO-list application, because we actually really like TODO lists.
And then we decided to make them collaborative apps, using Kinto. The goal here was to spend the least time possible plugging in Kinto, in order to see what was the real potential of it.
We ended up with a few cool demos. Not all of them are using the same features of Kinto (for instance some take advantage of the push notifications while some others don't), but overall that was pretty exciting.
Here are some links if you want to try out the demos yourself:
- The formbuilder with direct HTTP calls to the Kinto APIs.
- Kinto.js + Leaflet with offline-first maps which requires service workers activated (only works in Firefox Nightly these days).
- Kinto.js + Leaflet + Pusher with realtime multi device map markers synchronisation using Pusher.
- Kinto.js + fullCalendar with realtime multi device synchronisation using Pusher and Firefox Account integration.
- Kinto.js + Telegram Bot + Pusher a realtime wall that receive messages from a Telegram bot and automatically updates the slideshow in realtime and add the new content as soon as it arrives.
Hmm, and what about my use-case?
The idea here is mainly to show you what is already possible with very little efforts using the tooling we have put together. These examples are all relying on the Kinto.js client but ultimately you don't need it. It's just here to make it really easy for you to integrate with the HTTP APIs exposed by Kinto.
So, what can Kinto do for you?
Synchronise
If there was one only thing to choose, that would be this one. Kinto can synchronise your data between different devices. You have the data on one location, and you want it in a different one.
Storage
As a bonus, you get this data stored somewhere so you can access it later on.
The cool thing with this is that you can access this data using an HTTP (REST) API, that speaks JSON. We tried very hard to make the protocol as easy as possible, and to be honest we're pretty happy with our current design.
Permissions
Sometimes, you want your data to remain yours, and some other times you want to share it with friends. It really depends what the data is. One of the reasons we built Kinto was to control who has access to what on a per record level.
Real-time Notifications
So, what happens when the data evolves? Let's say you are on one device doing geo-mapping and someone else is doing the same thing on their own device. You want to have these two devices in Sync, and as such they need to know when new data was issued by any other device.
Going further
Our vision with Kinto is really to propose a simple tool for simple needs, and to do these simple things the best way we can.
If you are interested by what Kinto has to propose, don't hesitate to have a look at the documentation, try the Kinto.js tutorial and get in touch with us, we would be very happy to discuss what your needs are and how to make it as easy as possible for you.
Don't be shy, we are really here to help, and we want to know about your use-cases!