Retool

Reviewed July 24, 2019

Retool is a platform for programmers to rapidly create internal tools via reusable user-interface components paired with custom queries. It is used to build interfaces for the internal teams, mechanical turk workers (such as tagging data for ML), and augmenting Google Sheets data. It's WYSIWYG drag-and-drop UI editor is simple yet powerful when paired with the ability to tie inputs and events to queries and API requests.

Product Feel

👍 Thin UI layer on top of datastores
👍 Access to underlying JavaScript & data everywhere
👎 Lots of clicking and forms instead of keyboard
👎 Design feels a bit ad hoc - random where you find various features

Basic Usage

The above video creates an interface to search for customers, activate and deactivate their accounts, and view their orders. It demonstrates:

deleting a UI element
dragging elements onto the page
tying a UI table element to a query
tying the text of a input box to a query
adding and customizing a button
tying a button click event to a query
referencing the currently selected row in a table in a query
using JavScript expressions inside properties
triggering another query after one finishes
building a multipurpose button via ternary expressions in its text,color, and query attributes
creating a table based on the currently selected row in another table

JavaScript everywhere

Embedding a JavaScript expression into any property is as simple as typing {{}}. By default the Moment and Lodash libraries are built-in and accessible within any JS expression, and you can add other libraries or JS functions in the Settings page:

Property Browser

Explore the values of all variables in scope via the property browser on the left-side of the screen. In the following video, I create a temporary piece of state that increases each time a button is clicked. I then put the value of this state in the text of the button itself, followed by other variables I find by exploring the property browser. Updates to the UI are made automatically, a la React.

Integrations

They have built-in integrations to query a number of common data sources:

A custom integration is set up via a simple form:

Releases

While the product doesn't automatically save versions, it does allow for snapshots and "rollbacks" to previous versions. I was disappointed that they didn't allow forking of past versions.

Pricing

Wishes

Cancel running queries
Less confusing layout (four-pane layout was confusing)
Delete keypress doesn’t work to delete components