How to migrate from Parse to MongoDB and AWS?

Earlier, we had written a very informative tutorial on how to migrate Parse DB to self-hosted MongoDB. Well, this article will take a step forward reaching out to AWS Parse migration.

Overview

Parse Server is an open source version of the Parse backend that can be deployed to any infrastructure that can run Node.js. Parse is a Mobile Backend as a Service platform.
Parse Server was built in Node.js and works with the Express web application framework. It can be added to existing web applications, or run by itself.

Specifications

• Parse Server is not dependent on the hosted Parse backend.

• Parse Server uses MongoDB directly and is not dependent on the Parse hosted database.

• You can migrate an existing app to your own infrastructure.

• You can develop and test your app locally using Node.

Prerequisites

• Node >=4.3

• MongoDB version 2.6.X or 3.0.X

• Python 2.x (For Windows users, 2.7.1 is the required version)

• For deployment, an infrastructure provider like Heroku or AWS

Existing App in Parse.com

After migration to parse server

Migrate Parse DB to Self-Hosted MongoDB

Using your own MongoDB instance and infrastructure will help ensure that your  queries will run at their highest level of performance. By migrating your database, you will be able to:

• Backup your entire database periodically and on demand.

• Restore backups.

• Increase performance of queries (and thereby your app) by providing larger amounts of dedicated processing power and memory to your database.

• Eliminate risk of another app impacting the performance of your app’s queries.

• Gain raw access to your application’s data.

• Modify, add or fine-tune indexes on your most popular or complex queries.

Use the database migration tool to transfer your data from parse.com ( App Settings → General → Migrate to an external database ). Add your MongoDB URL in the textbox.Make sure the URL contains admin privileges.A new collection will be added to your database specified in MongoDB URL. Make sure it contains all the data as in parse.com.Now you can use this collection for further querying.

Set Up Local Parse Server (nodejs and express)

We are using an express application with a parse-server module. Earlier the URL contains domain name as ‘api.parse.com’, but now we can change it to our own domain name (localhost too).

Create a new express application using an express generator if you didn’t have any express application. Make sure the nodejs version is >=4.3

Follow the below steps:

1. Install parse-server module using npm (version >=2.1.4)npm install -g parse-server

2. Create a new folder named ’cloud’ in the root directory. Add a new file ‘main.js’ to this folder. This file will contain all the parse defined functions.

3. Create an instance of Parse Server in your server file (app.js)
var api = new ParseServer({
databaseURI: '<mongodb://your.mongo.uri>',
cloud:’’,
appId: '',
fileKey: '',
masterKey: '',
serverURL: ‘http://localhost:1337/parse’
});


4. If you are using Parse Hosting, you can migrate all these web endpoints to the same Express app that is serving Parse Server. For example, you could mount Parse Server under /parse and your website at the root, like so:app.use(‘/parse’, api);

So that all the parse defined functions will be loaded in the url with

app.use('/parse', api);

5. We will now migrate your existing Cloud Code to run in Parse Server. Copy your app’s Cloud Code to the application ‘cloud/main.js’

A sample function is given below:
Parse.Cloud.define("list", function(request, response) {
var query = new Parse.Query('TableName')
query.find({
error: function(err) {
response.error(err)
},
success: function(res) {
response.success(res)
}
})
});


This will list all the data inside the collection ‘TableName’

6. Now the express app is all set to run the parse query.Run the application ‘http://localhost:1337’ in browser and check whether its
running.

7. Run the query

curl -X POST  -H "X-Parse-Application-Id: YOUR_APP_ID" \
http://localhost:1337/parse/functions/list


8. Now you will see the list of data inside the collection.

Deploy the application to AWS

Clone this application from github to aws.
You are now ready to start your parse-server app.

1. npm install

2. npm start

Make sure you have changed the ‘serverURL’ and ‘databaseURI’ inside the parse instance from localhost to production url.
Try running the application using the production url.

Note : On January 28, 2017, any calls to the hosted Parse backend service (api.parse.com) will cease to function.