github-to-sqlite VS ExtPay

Yeah, I worry about that too. I have SO much of my stuff dependent on my GitHub account now.

I'm slightly reassured by how useful their APIs are. I have automated exports of a lot of my GitHub issues, though I really should shore those up and make sure I'm capturing everything.

That's one of the reasons I built https://github.com/dogsheep/github-to-sqlite

I have trouble answering this question myself, and I created it!

The problem I have is that it can be applied to too many different problems.

I personally have used it for the following (a truncated summary):

- Publishing data online to allow other people to explore it, for example https://scotrail.datasette.io and https://russian-ira-facebook-ads.datasettes.com/

- Building websites, by combining it with custom templates. https://datasette.io and https://www.niche-museums.com and https://til.simonwillison.net are three examples

- Building my own combined search engine over a bunch of different data. https://github-to-sqlite.dogsheep.net is this for my GitHub issues and commits and issue comments across 100+ projects

- Similarly, building a code search engine across multiple repos (partly to demonstrate how far you can go with custom plugins): https://ripgrep.datasette.io

- Any time I have a CSV file I open it in the Datasette Desktop macOS app first to start exploring it: https://datasette.io/desktop

- As a prototyping tool. It's the fastest way I know of to get from some data files (CSV or JSON) to a working JSON API - and a GraphQL API too using this plugin: https://datasette.io/plugins/datasette-graphql

- Messing around with geospatial data - here's a write-up of my favourite experiment with that so far: https://simonwillison.net/2021/Jan/24/drawing-shapes-spatial...

This is a bewilderingly wide array of things! And I keep on finding new problems I can apply it to:

Of course, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But thanks to the plugin system (and the amazing flexibility of SQLite under the good) I can reshape my hammer into all sorts of interesting shapes!

I've been trying to capture some of this at https://datasette.io/for

This is one of my biggest marketing challenges for the project though. If someone asks you for an elevator pitch you need to do better than spending 15 minutes talking through a wide ranging bulleted list!

You might also want to look at https://github.com/dogsheep/github-to-sqlite for saving issues, pull-requests, etc

Thanks for letting me know - fixed that here: https://github.com/dogsheep/github-to-sqlite/issues/74

My application Datasette can serve this need: https://datasette.io/

Lots of live demos - two of my favourites are https://github-to-sqlite.dogsheep.net/ and https://global-power-plants.datasettes.com/

I've been using the sqlite_utils Python library to build a whole suite of tools for importing data from various different sources into SQLite, including healthkit-to-sqlite, swarm-to-sqlite, twitter-to-sqlite, inaturalist-to-sqlite, google-takeout-to-sqlite, github-to-sqlite, genome-to-sqlite, pocket-to-sqlite, hacker-news-to-sqlite, evernote-to-sqlite.

I've been using SQLite/Litestream for https://extensionpay.com for about 3 years now! Serves about 120m requests per month (most of those are cached and don't hit the db), but it's been great!

I was convinced that SQLite could be a viable db option from this great post about it called Consider SQLite: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/consider-sqlite

Using SQLite with Litestream helped me to launch the site quickly without having to pay for or configure/manage a db server, especially when I didn't know if the site would make any money and didn't have any personal experience with running production databases. Litestream streams to blackblaze b2 for literally $0 per month which is great. I already had a backblaze account for personal backups and it was easy to just add b2 storage. I've never had to restore from backup so far.

There's a pleasing operational simplicity in this setup — one $14 DigitalOcean droplet serves my entire app (single-threaded still!) and it's been easy to scale vertically by just upgrading the server to the next tier when I started pushing the limits of a droplet (or doing some obvious SQLite config optimizations). DigitalOcean's "premium" intel and amd droplets use NVMe drives which seem to be especially good with SQLite.

One downside of using SQLite is that there's just not as much community knowledge about using and tuning it for web applications. For example, I'm using it with SvelteKit and there's not much written online about deploying multi-threaded SvelteKit apps with SQLite. Also, not many example configs to learn from. By far the biggest performance improvement I found was turning on memory mapping for SQLite.

I made a couple browser extensions that make over $500/month each. The key seems to be naming your extension after high-volume search terms and getting good reviews on the chrome store (and obviously having an extension that works well and solve a common problem on major websites). I monetized them with my own service, https://extensionpay.com. Feels so good to eat your own dog food :)

Neat! I'm serving around 120m requests per month for https://extensionpay.com from a 2GB VPS running a single-threaded nodejs process and SQLite as the db. Most of the requests are cached, but still, it's amazing how far you can get with cheap hardware.

I use SQLite/Litestream for https://extensionpay.com! Serves about 120m requests per month (most of those are cached and don't hit the db), but it's been great!

I have no affiliation with Litestream but I was convinced that SQLite could be a viable db option from this great post about it called Consider SQLite: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/consider-sqlite

Using SQLite with Litestream helped me to launch the site quickly without having to pay for or configure/manage a db server, especially when I didn't know if the site would make any money and didn't have any personal experience with running production databases. Litestream streams to blackblaze b2 for literally $0 per month which is great. I already had a backblaze account for personal backups and it was easy to just add b2 storage. I've never had to restore from backup so far.

There's a pleasing operational simplicity in this setup — one $14 DigitalOcean droplet serves my entire app (single-threaded still!) and it's been easy to scale vertically by just upgrading the server to the next tier when I started pushing the limits of a droplet. DigitalOcean's "premium" intel and amd droplets use NVMe drives which seem to be especially good with SQLite.

One downside of using SQLite is that there's just not as much community knowledge about using and tuning it for web applications. For example, I'm using it with SvelteKit and there's not much written online about deploying multi-threaded SvelteKit apps with SQLite. Also, not many example configs to learn from. By far the biggest performance improvement I found was turning on memory mapping for SQLite.

Happy to answer any questions you might have!

I made https://extensionpay.com to monetize my own browser extensions and between that and free distribution on the extension stores it’s really easy to try making extensions that make money. So far devs have made over $300k with ExtensionPay. That said, it still take some skill to find a niche that works.

Just want to put a plug in for https://extensionpay.com/ - I've used it in extensions in the past. It takes away the headache of setting up a backend for payment. They do take an extra 5%, but it's worth it especially. for smaller projects

Have a go at looking at this: https://extensionpay.com,

That's fair. Right now my payment processor (ExtensionPay) doesn't support multiple pricing tiers. However, in the future I'm considering rolling out my own logic so that I can provide a lifetime license option for some users.

Oh nice! Maybe you'd be interested in the tool I built to take payments in extensions: https://extensionpay.com

If your concern is about security of the extension, you may right click on top of the extension's icon and select "Inspect popup". Select the "Network" tab and type CTRL-R to force a reload of the extension. Verify there are no external network requests (except to extensionpay.com for paid features).