How to create app with parse server?

Question

In parse.com, when I want to create new app, I use:

curl -X POST \
-H "X-Parse-Email: <PARSE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL>" \
-H "X-Parse-Password: <PARSE_ACCOUNT_PASSWORD>" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"appName":"my new app","clientClassCreationEnabled":false}' \
https://api.parse.com/1/apps

But when I deployed Parse server to Heroku and Digital Ocean, I didn't know to create new app, because my server doesn't have PARSE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL and PARSE_ACCOUNT_PASSWORD. When I deployed parse dashboard, it didn't have "Create a new app" like Parse.com.

How can I create new app with my self-hosted Parse server?

Answer 1

The self hosted parse servers can only handle one app per server, at least for now. This means that you will have to use several installations of Parse, one app per installation using multiple servers or multiple instances of parse on the same server but configure each server to use different ports.

To answer you question: No you do not need to use parse.com to create new apps. To create a new app you set the appID and password in the parse config/start file on your digital ocean or other hosted server. The appID and password can be anything that you make up, it does not need to be from parse.com.

Below is an example of the environment settings in a startup file:

**Example file: ~/parse-server-example/my_app.js**

var express = require('express');
var ParseServer = require('parse-server').ParseServer;

// Configure the Parse API
var api = new ParseServer({
  databaseURI: 'mongodb://localhost:27017/dev',
  cloud: __dirname + '/cloud/main.js',
  appId: 'myOtherAppId',
  masterKey: 'myMasterKey'
});

var app = express();

// Serve the Parse API on the /parse URL prefix
app.use('/myparseapp', api);

// Listen for connections on port 1337
var port = 9999;
app.listen(port, function() {
    console.log('parse-server-example running on port ' + port + '.');
});

Then run the file with:

node my_app.js

You can read more here: Parse Server at Digital Ocean

Answer 2

There is an open issue for that: https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-dashboard/issues/188

For the moment, I just use parse's hosted dashboard to create new apps. They say on January 28th, calls to their API will cease to function. They don't say that the hosted dashboard will be going away. I imagine that, if they don't get it into the self-hosted version, you'll still be able to create new apps within the hosted dashboard.

In any case, for now what I am doing is creating the app as I normally would in the hosted dashboard. I then run the migration tool at app > app settings > general > Migrate to external database option. You have to add at least one class to the database in order for the migration tool to work. Basically, the migration tool will fail with some ambiguous error message if it's a completely fresh app with a clean database.

Once the migration is done and read/writes are hooked up to my self-hosted Parse Server, I then providing the app's keys, etc in the parse-dashboard-config.json file of my self-hosted Parse Dashboard. You can add multiple apps to this config file, thus manage all of your apps from a single self-hosted Parse Dashboard.

Here's an example of that config file with two apps:

{
"apps": [
  {
    "serverURL": "https://my-parse-server-1.herokuapp.com/parse",
    "appId": "b44gL7uAB1z...lwUJneaoKdX9",
    "masterKey": "HrSqFbH...hfiwuCCOLDvHF",
    "appName": "parse-server-1"
  },
  {
    "serverURL": "https://my-parse-server-2.herokuapp.com/parse",
    "appId": "b44gL7uAB1z...lwUJneaoKdX9",
    "masterKey": "HrSqFbH...hfiwuCCOLDvHF",
    "appName": "parse-server-2"
  }
  ],
  "users": [
  {
    "user":"admin",
    "pass":"somePasswordHere"
  }
  ]
}

This seems to be the only way currently to create apps that you can connect to your self-hosted Parse Dashboard.

It's also important to note that, at the moment, it appears as though the self-hosted Parse Server package only supports a single app. I have no idea if there are any plans to support multiple apps as they have done with Parse Dashboard.

And finally, you can use the Parse Command Line tool to create new apps as well: https://parse.com/docs/cloudcode/guide#command-line-creating-a-parse-app

They also have some interesting integrations with Heroku which facilitate the entire process. That might be worth looking into. You could create a simple Node app yourself with a GUI for creating new Parse apps. In this case, you would create a simple form, that when submitted is validated and then executes the command line methods to create a new app with the ShellJS node package. You could even modify the Parse Dashboard package to include this feature yourself within the self-hosted Dashboard.