Webform that updates DB

Assumes a pre-existing REST API & running Postgres DB

I had an existing project crud-app that has an Express-based CRUD API that uses Postgres.

I asked ChatGPT:

1. write me a web page that interacts with a REST API backend that uses Postgres DB
2. now show me how to create a web form that allows me to edit the data using the REST API

It told me to install Flask (Python framework) and gave me app.py & index.html & style.css for a webform that interacted with my Postgres DB using my REST API.

Usage

1. Fire up the crud-app docker compose stack, from its directory, docker compose up -d
2. from this project's directory, run python3 app.py
3. in your browser, open the page: http://localhost:8080
4. you should see the inital data, and be able to create, update or delete any of the records

Misconceptions

I thought I had it doing all updates via the REST API. However, I was just making calls to the DB, using the same logic the API used!

Refactored to use api.demojoyto.win.

Learnings

One side-effect of having a web frontend and an API is the different ways the same data displays. Note how chatgpt-webapp renders users puts the fiellds in alphabetical order (email/id/name) while the raw API puts/keeps them as they are defined in the DB (id/name/email).

Notes: had to add both AWS IPs to the Cloudflare WAF to prevent 403s.

Codebase visualization