Hand me the JSON will ya?
Back in the web development space, although these could be used for native/mobile development as well. As always, let me know what you think.
Have a great idea for a simple app, maybe you just want to play with the latest framework and actually save some data, but don’t want to commit to setting up something more permanent? That seems to be the use case for these JSON storage services.
Calling them databases might be a bit generous, but they do offer a way to persist some data for your app or site with a minimum of fuss. They would certainly be a great choice if you want to build out and test your UI and logic before committing to a full database. I would probably be a bit careful before trusting them with anything critical, not only for security reasons, but also because they all appear to be operated by individuals. Don’t be surprised if the service disappears at some point.
But for a simple REST, CRUD-based API, these all seem like good options.
JSONbin.io
JSONbin is a place to put some JSON online which you can then fetch later. It bills itself as a tool to help you test or experiment with your UIs potentially before committing to a more permanent data storage solution. It seems to only have the concepts of single records, no lists or collections of records, although I guess they are working on that. It supports secret keys for managing private bins as well as webhooks for getting notified when data is updated.
n:point
Another lightweight service to provide data during the prototyping phase of your project. They seem to be more focused on the schema of your data, allowing you to lock that in, and then you can allow other people to edit your data without worrying about breaking structural changes. Sub-property access allows for targeted querying. They also support some premium feature including custom domain support. There is no mention of price for these, just to contact them.
jsonstore.io
It took me a few minutes to figure out how jsonstore.io worked, as it is light on the details. I ended up getting what I needed from the Github site linked from the main page. You don’t need an account to use the service, when you load the home page you are given a unique URL, and basically you can store whatever you want at various paths below that. It is basically one giant JSON document that you can query into. It even has some basic sorting and filtering capabilities. There is no online editor or UI, it is all API based.