If you want to build a good web app you usually need more than just UI. You need something to store and handle your user’s data(authentication, registration etc..) and the what they input to your app, it can be a post, a comment maybe an image.
Parse-server gets you going with basic user management and session control, and with Parse-dashboard you have a user-friendly interface which you can use to create database models and configure their properties. After that, it is very easy to send requests to your server, you can either use the REST API or you can choose to use parse’s SDK that has a wide support. You can easily deploy parse-server to different cloud platforms such as Heroku, AWS, and Azure. Basically, parse needs a machine that can run node js, so to run parse-server locally you can choose to add it to an existing Express app, or if installed globally you can run it from your command line like so:
parse-server --appId APPLICATION_ID --masterKey MASTER_KEY --databaseURI mongodb://localhost/test
(*Note: No matter how you choose to use parse-server, it requires a connection to a Mongo DB server. When deploying automatically to cloud platforms the deployment process itself handles all your needs.)
When configuring Parse, you’ll have to choose a master key and an application ID that you’ll have to include to your request’s headers so it can be authenticated.
After you have installed the server and you feel you are ready to get started with building all your app structure (DB Models) on your backend service you can install parse-dashboard globally on your machine you can start your parse-dashboard like so:
parse-dashboard --appId yourAppId --masterKey yourMasterKey --serverURL "https://example.com/parse" --appName optionalName
(*Note: If you have more than one parse server that you are working you can create a JSON file that holds all the servers configuration and just point parse-dashboard to it. It makes things a lot more comfortable and easy.)
The last thing left to do is to use your ui to send requests to the server and see the magic happening.
(*Note: Dont’t forget to add all the nessecary headers to your requests if you have decided not to use the parse SDK.)
Thank you for following us and hope to see you next week!
By Yousef Shamshoum
