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Cover image for Awesome projects under 1000 stars (1) - Badgen
Guillaume Martigny
Guillaume Martigny

Posted on • Edited on

Awesome projects under 1000 stars (1) - Badgen

Discovering new projects is not an easy task. Thousands pops every days and a happy few become renown. This leaves a huge chunk of work forgotten by everyone, sometimes for good reasons (useless, copy-pasta, under-maintained ...) and sometimes for no reason whatsoever.

With this thread of article I aim to shine some light over an interesting project once a month.

As it's the very first post, I lay some basic rules for myself:

  • Any project in the web-sphere is eligible (library, tool, website ...)
  • Only open-source hosted on github (I want to promote OOS, but I don't have the time to parse many source)
  • Project under 1000 stars are considered, but the lower the better
  • I handpick and test every project for a while before giving any appreciation
  • Project should be stable, maintained and over 1 month old

I'm welcoming with great pleasure any suggestions in the comments. I'll look at them all and surely write about it if it respects the initial rules.

Without further ado, I present you

badgen and badgen-service

Yes two for the price of one !

Badgen can be used as a online service or as a javascript library.

I'm sure you've already seen a repository badge like:
example badge
Well, it's never been easier and faster to render one using badgen.

Built to be a faster alternative to shields.io, badgen deliver with awesome speed. The syntaxe to build badge is really clear and hackable. You can even use any arbitrary end-point returning a JSON formatted response.

You can check all examples on the badgen website, but here's a handful of them for a taste with corresponding URL:

Serving a JSON with a "subject", "status" and "color" field allow you to build custom dynamic badge. Here's a stupid example loosely showing what I should be doing right now.
I create a runkit script outputing the right data. Then use this end-point in the badgen URL.

/https/untitled-ljtss6i6xow1.runkit.sh
doing now

The most awesome thing, in my opinion, is the reactivity of the main maintainer. The project is very active and you get answer to your issue or PR in a matter of hours.

Bonus points: the code is clear and well put together (even if it lack documentation) and can be a nice learning point.

Go check it out and see you all next month.

Top comments (6)

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jeb profile image
JeB • Edited

Great initiative! If you'll allow me I'd like to shamelessly promote my project (just because I think it can be useful for a lot of people, no ego involved, I promise). Meet angular-builders.

In any case I'm looking forward to the next one! Keep going!

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gmartigny profile image
Guillaume Martigny

Of course you can. As I said, I keep a list of project to dig into. I'll add yours and see if it fit.

It's purely subjective, so if I never use your suggestion, it's not because it's bad, but because I didn't see its value.

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johncarroll profile image
John Carroll

I'm completely unrelated to angular-builders, but I am one of the 84 people who have already starred the project and I must say, as someone who codes with angular, I think it's an excellent project.

Also, its super random that I happened to read this small back and forth.

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edisonywh profile image
Edison Yap

Wow this sounds like an amazing idea! Look forward to the next one man!

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mouvedia profile image
G. • Edited

<disclaimer>shameless plug</disclaimer>

If you need a no-stress featureful cross-browser HTTP client check cb-fetch. It aims to fix all browsers discrepancies and provide an user-friendly API.

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t4rzsan profile image
Jakob Christensen

Good idea. Keep'em coming!