Setup your Private Parse Server in Production

Parse is a BaaS (Backend as a Service) for mobile applications. They provide a suite of cloud services for developers that are tightly coupled with SDKs for all the major client platforms.

Unfortunately, they are closing their services to new subscriptions and definitely on January 28, 2017. While this is bad news, they open-sourced their backend so that the community can continue the project.

If you are already familiar with Parse, you will be happy to learn that the backend is written in Node.js and uses MongoDB as a database which are both easy to deploy on Clever Cloud.

Parse Server

They published an example of a basic application using their backend on Github.

Deploy on Clever Cloud

1. First, you need to clone this repository (or use an existing one) and modify the Parse Server instanciation:

   var api = new ParseServer({
   databaseURI: process.env.MONGODB_ADDON_URI, // Use the MongoDB URI
   cloud: process.env.CLOUD_CODE_MAIN || __dirname + '/cloud/main.js',
   appId: process.env.PARSE_APPID, // Use environment variable to set the APP_ID
   masterKey: process.env.PARSE_MASTERKEY // Use environment variable to set the PARSE_MASTERKEY
   });
   

2. Open the Clever Cloud Console, create an account if you don't have one yet
3. Create a Node.js application and a MongoDB addon
4. Add these two environment variables: PARSE_APPID: <parseAppID>, PARSE_MASTERKEY: <parseMasterKey>
5. Follow the instructions about adding the remote to your local git repository
6. Deploy it: git push clever master and head to your application's logs

From there you can setup a custom domain name and start using it as you would on Parse!

Happy mobile development!

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By Arnaud Lefebvre

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