Create new apps using dashboard

[khafagy]

I was using Parse.com to host about 7 or 8 apps and I was creating new app every 2 weeks,
I was using it mainly to send push notification as it's very easy to integrate,
And like a lot of app developers I don't have experience to deal with "Node, MongoDB, ..." ,
So it will be very useful if you can add the ability to:

1. Create new applications using parse-dashboard.
2. Auto generate application keys and save it to parse-dashboard database.
3. Upload Apple push certificates through parse-dashboard.
4. "Add/configure" GCM key through parse-dashboard.

So we could easily "create apps -> get keys -> integrate -> 'add certificates / GMC' -> Push"

Thanks

[davimacedo]

You can use a Parse Hosting solution to do it for you. You can find the actual options here:
https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-server#parse-server-sample-application

[drew-gross]

Parse Server doesn't support multiple apps on one server, so this is a long way off. One thing we could do is allow you to add apps to your configuration file in a dialog on the dashboard.

[khafagy]

I think this will be very useful,
So if I can:

1. Add apps configuration through dashboard.
2. Upload Apple push certificates through dashboard.
3. "Add/configure" GCM key through dashboard.

That will be about 80% of the work that I should do manually now,
And this will be awesome.

[flovilmart]

Upload Apple push certificates through dashboard.
"Add/configure" GCM key through dashboard.

This is not supported in parse-server.

[khafagy]

@flovilmart What about that:
https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-server/wiki/Push

var server = new ParseServer({ databaseURI: '...', cloud: '...', appId: '...', masterKey: '...', push: { android: { senderId: '...', apiKey: '...' }, ios: { pfx: '/file/path/to/XXX.p12', bundleId: '', production: false } } });

[flovilmart]

That is how to initialize Parseserver, but you can't swap this configuration at runtime based on some configuration from parse-dashboard

[khafagy]

What about new instance of parse server,
So instead of creating new apps dashboard should create new instances like:

var app1 = new ParseServer({
  databaseURI: 'mongodb://localhost:27017/app1',
  cloud: '/home/app1/cloud/main.js', // Provide an absolute path
  appId: 'myAppId',
  masterKey: 'mySecretMasterKey',
  fileKey: 'optionalFileKey',
  push: {
      android: {
        senderId: '...',
        apiKey: '...'
      },
      ios: {
        pfx: '/file/path/to/XXX.p12',
        bundleId: '',
        production: false
      }
   }
});

// Serve the Parse API on the /parse URL prefix
app.use('/app1', app1);

var app2 = new ParseServer({
  databaseURI: 'mongodb://localhost:27017/app2',
  cloud: '/home/app2/cloud/main.js', // Provide an absolute path
  appId: 'myAppId',
  masterKey: 'mySecretMasterKey',
  fileKey: 'optionalFileKey',
  push: {
      android: {
        senderId: '...',
        apiKey: '...'
      },
      ios: {
        pfx: '/file/path/to/XXX.p12',
        bundleId: '',
        production: false
      }
   }
});

// Serve the Parse API on the /parse URL prefix
app.use('/app2', app2);

[flovilmart]

That won't work correctly due to the Parse SDK being a singleton.

[khafagy]

wow :(
This was to be very useful

[flovilmart]

what do you mean? Multiple apps support could theoretically work, but without Cloud Code. I've worked on it for a while and had a functional proposal, in the end, we decided not to support it.

[khafagy]

I mean that me and all developers moved from parse.com hosted solution are looking for an easy GUI to work with,
It's not easy to create parse server for every new app and run the server manually then upload apple certificates to be able to send push notifications,
That scenario might work with single app but what about 10 or 50 apps?

[flovilmart]

you can run it with just a command line tool and a config.json file. It basically takes 10 minutes to configure and deploy heroku.

there is also parse-server/bootstrap.sh that you can run in a clean folder that would build the basic parse-server folder structure.

wget --quiet https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ParsePlatform/parse-server/master/bootstrap.sh && sh bootstrap.sh 

[agilekevin]

We (Buddy) are thinking of handling this case as well, with some kind of a webhook that ultimately calls our devops code to create the server.

I don't think anybody would want our devops code, but we could certainly submit a PR that does what @drew-gross describes, along with some kind of "create server instance" adapter that accepts the necessary values, and the UI to collect them. Other folks could plug in their own heroku or aws solution.

Would this be welcome?

[flovilmart]

I believe this is really overkill, but that's my take on it.

[drew-gross]

@agilekevin that sounds pretty sweet, I'd happily accept a PR that puts "pluggable app creation" into the dashboard. A nice simple way to do that might be to put the "create new app" webhook URL into the dashboard config, and if the dashboard detects the presence of this URL, it enables the "create new app" button, and sends requests to that URL. There would probably need to be some sort of auth, too, which might be a harder problem. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

#23 removed the code for the "create new app" button, reverting that PR in your fork would probably be a good starting point.