SpiceNice - An Open Source Spice Database

In this article I would like to introduce the SpiceNice database website. It is an open source database of culinary spices. Besides valuable information on spices you can also read about the corresponding plants. A section on free literature about spices completes the website.

What is SpiceNice

SpiceNice is a database of culinary spices. It contains information on the spice itself as well as on the corresponding plant. The idea is that you have structured data about culinary spices and its plants. This allows people who are interested in spices, like cooks, biologists, farmers and the general public to inform themselves. Additionally, there is a small section on free literature about spices.

In the website version of the SpiceNice database you can select the spice that interests you. Then you get a more detailed overview of the spice with information like the botanical name, its culinary form and country of origin. Furthermore, there is information on the plant included, with explanation of plant botany and cultivation.

Origin of the Data

The data was retrieved from the English edition of Wikipedia.

Technical Architecture

The backend of SpiceNice is composed of the open source headless CMS (content management system) Strapi, connected to a PostgreSQL database. Astro is used as the frontend framework that generates the SpiceNice static website.

Future Direction

The vision for SpiceNice is to become a comprehensive specialized database on culinary spices. It could also provide a web API to query the data with bindings for different programming languages. Also, the goal is to build up a community of like-minded people interested in the world of culinary spices. They could collaborate and communicate via the SpiceNice platform.

Translation of the database content into different languages would be another goal. Bringing together consumers and producers of spice products would also be valuable.

Conclusion

This concludes this overview of the SpiceNice open source product. If you are interested, want to collaborate or give feedback, please feel free to contact me via the button below.

References

SpiceNice website: https://spicenice.pages.dev

Strapi CMS: https://strapi.io

Cover Photo by Taras Yasinski from Pixabay