I wished for a part manager with the following properties:
- self hosted: I do not wish to rely on an external service (which could become unreachable or simply disappear)
- web interface: this removes the need of yet another window running while designing boards, and just integrates well with the remaining part searching activity (e.g. on manufacturer and distributor web pages)
- customizable: simply because everyone has a different designing work flow, and wants to optimize their tools according to it (particularly myself)
One matching solution I found is [PartKeepr](https://partkeepr.org/).
I used it for several year, and it could still be OK for my needs.
But some aspects are just not that optimal anymore:
- it is not developed anymore since 2018 (a docker image keeps it runnable)
- logging in, and searching for parts is slow
- customizing it is really hard (views, features, ...)
- you always have to edit the part and click several times to copy any kind of value
I recently also discovered [Binner](https://binner.io/).
It does not allow to add custom part properties, or third parties distributors.
But it's a young project and seems promising.
Because they did not fit by power user demands, I decided to implement my own solution.
partdb is very crude, but it works, particularly for me.
components
==========
Part information is:
- stored in a MariaDB/mySQL database
- retrieved using a sinatra HTTP/REST server
- displayed using minimal HTML+JS pages
installation
============
install software dependencies (here for Arch linux):