Hey everyone, first post so go easy if
Hey everyone, first post so go easy if this is the wrong place to start a convo like this... however I'm in an odd place where I have a small but growing database of motorsports data that I have been slowly building up as a passion project over the years, but its in a highly dated and very basic LAMP stack that started in 2009 and has been held together with parcel tape and dreams ever since...
I want to finally use the data to create a public web app (maybe phone app?) and I want to use it as a ground up learning exp but be 'modern' and i KNOW convex is the right starting point! I found it purely by chance and it seems ideal the more I read.. but I honestly dont know where to start when it comes to the rest of the stack or even the approach with migrating the mysql/php horrorshow over!?
can anyone point me in the direction of a stack you think might suit? a tutorial/guide/101 setup for something vaguely similar?
TLDR: I'm a primarily FE dev (Angular & React) looking to migrate a motorsports statistic database from private LAMP admin to convex + ?? public web app / phone app and dont know where to start.
10 Replies
Welcome! So the big question is whether you want a native app or just a web app, but you don't definitely need to know in advance. Do you know which you want to focus on first?
well I have never dabbled with native at all.. so for speed of development, I somewhat assumed I'd be going react & react native.. or a somewhat similar JS translator.
I appreciate the end result may not be as slick.. but for an initial offering I feel it would be enough. The dream is one codebase serving a web app, iOS and Android but im not sure we are there yet haha.
As for focus, definitely the web app. Its a comfort zone, it would make sense around convex regarding auth/users/data security etc.. and learning how the flow works
Thank you for the response too Erquhart.. appreciated :flikstrrHorns:
new project, new stack, new learning.. all the dopamine to feed the neurospicy 😄
I'd go with this one structurally speaking: https://www.convex.dev/templates/monorepo
Monorepo with Next.js and Expo
Fullstack monorepo template feat. Expo, Turbo, Next.js, Convex, Clerk
This is a modern TypeScript monorepo template with AI web and native apps featuring:
- Turborepo: Monorepo management
- Next.js 13: Web app & marketing page
- React Native Expo: Mobile/native app
- Convex: Backend, database, server functions
- [Clerk](ht...
Although, if you really want to do one codebase for real, I'd consider making an Expo app and using react-native-web to generate the web client. That's my plan for my current project, but I'm building the native (Expo) side out fully and then doing web. So can't actually give an experienced opinion on react native web, but I'm committed to it unless it's catastrophically bad.
I am also a frontend dev btw, and when I say "native" I mean react native lol
yeah I always assume that ahaha.. must be FE things.
I will look into your stack suggestion above.. thank you very much! Any help is huge and a nudge in the right direct to get 'something' going would be massive.
I'll look deping into expo.. perhaps I could join you and swap focus to mobile first
any reason you went with clerk for auth over convex's library (maybe im missunderstanding, but i thought convex had its own version) or even Auth0? personl preference or is there something specific it offers?
That’s an older template from before Convex Auth was released, that’s all.
ah ok. would you swap the auth to convex starting now?
I would use Convex Auth, yeah
do you think it would be easy to swap out/in on that stack you linked?
the otherone I was looking at was https://www.convex.dev/templates/convex-saas
which seems less mobile centric, but would give me a saas model i guess of tiers.. (ive not even thought about how to monetize my data lol)
Convex TanStack SaaS Starter
A production-ready Convex Stack for your next SaaS application with Convex Auth, Stripe, TanStack, Resend, Tailwindcss, and shadcn.
That one is only built for web, but other than that yeah I’d recommend it
Switching the first one I linked to use convex auth shouldn’t take a ton of work