We've been constantly improving Skeletor, our base template for new projects, over the years.
Most recently we added big chunks of functionality for mobile apps via React Native and a standalone installation script that doesn't require django-admin on your command line.
Fast install, standalone script
All you need is this command, typing in your project name, and selecting an option or two .. that's it!
$ bash <(curl -fsSL https://skeletor.ckcollab.com)
Now you have a Django + Vue + React Native project you can deploy to Heroku and get on the app stores very quickly. You could add realtime chat in a few steps with django-chit-chat.
Mobile!
One of the biggest changes for Skeletor, and for Ckc in 2022, was adding mobile app support. We've steered away from that ecosystem until recently, where we've found React Native to be a pretty great tool.. mostly thanks to the folks at Expo and their nicely packaged modules.
We played with Native Base this year and were actually burned pretty badly by it. We started out with this framework, and it seemed fine, but pretty soon we were experiencing horrible latency loading some components. Then we hit a final straw where things were just too slow and had to rip it out.
Funnily we used ChatGPT to help replace a lot of these components! We would present the chatbot with our component code and ask it to be replaced with default React components. It was shockingly close most of the time, and did a perfect job often!
Many small improvements
- Built in login/logout/password reset request utilities you need on almost every project
- Better handling of Heroku by default (Redis SSL anyone?!)
- Various changes in
backend/settings/test.pyto make tests faster (cheap password hashing, etc.) - Better handling for emails/email templates
- Django Migration checker before git pushes
- Prevent use of
v-htmldangerously - Better Vue linting in general
- Better S3 and Cloudcube support
- Remove many django auth third party dependencies
Does this shit even work!?
Has been used successfully to completion on over a dozen projects!
It is not unusual for us to get a new project in the afternoon and have a proof of concept or simple solution going by that night or the next day. We can move extremely quickly with our toolset.
Upcoming changes
- Add opinionated react support, once we have some good opinions!
- More modules in the mobile base app, like password reset
- And more broadly, semi-out of scope for this article, is more Ckc maintained packages, we currently have:
- django-ckc - nice helpers for django in general
- django-chit-chat - chat via websockets (channels!)
- dotfiles - boot up a dev machine with neat presets