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Parse launches JavaScript SDK: Parse for Websites

blog.parse.com

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Re: Parse launches JavaScript SDK: Parse for Websites

#21

Post by jiggy2011 »

tudorw wrote: post #7

seriously, if it took you days to set up PHP and MYSQL you might have picked the wrong vocation...

Yes, this may have been true 10 years ago when installing everything meant getting the source , setting compile flags for everything to work together and updates were applied manually.

These days I can have Ubuntu , Apache , PHP5 , Mysql and Wordpress all working happily on a VPS in under an hour.

On the other hand there are other considerations like maintenance , security and scaling that it might be nice not to have to worry about.

Re: Parse launches JavaScript SDK: Parse for Websites

#22

Post by arturadib »

Hats off.

Parse is the first of all these backend-as-a-service startups to face and solve the biggest problem in the web context: user authentication and data security.

By offering a full signup service with email verification and user-level control over the database they have eliminated perhaps the most redundant piece of work that just about every web app has had to implement.

Lock-in is of course a concern, but that hasn't prevent some AWS services from taking off big time. Perhaps in the near future one will see an open source project that offers an off-the-shelf backend with a Parse-compatible API, much like what happened to S3 and etc.

Pricing on the other hand is a concern, particularly if your service requires background workers that constantly update the database -- every update is an API request hit, and one can only wonder what they charge beyond their Pro account.

Overall, I think this is a huge step in the right direction. Because it's the 21st century and one shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time one writes a new web app.

Re: Parse launches JavaScript SDK: Parse for Websites

#23

Post by doc4t »

"There was a time when building a cutting edge web app meant wasting hours setting up a Linux server, days installing MySQL and Ruby or PHP, and months slaving away writing backend server code. Web development was nasty, brutish, and long. It sucked. But that was the past. Parse is the future. And it’s here today."

Never ever present your product from talking nagative about something or someone else. The only thing this kind of presentation makes me think is "Gee - didn't they have anything good to say about their product?"

Re: Parse launches JavaScript SDK: Parse for Websites

#25

Post by timjahn »

arturadib wrote: post #22

Hats off. Parse is the first of all these backend-as-a-service startups to face and solve the biggest problem in the web context: user authentication and data security. By offering a full signup service with email verification and user-level control over the database they have eliminated perhaps the most redundant piece of work that just about every web app has had to implement. Lock-in is of course a concern, but th…

"Lock-in is of course a concern, but that hasn't prevent some AWS services from taking off big time. Perhaps in the near future one will see an open source project that offers an off-the-shelf backend with a Parse-compatible API, much like what happened to S3 and etc."

I hope so. I agree that user authentication is a redundant piece of any app that needs to be implemented each time. But I don't like the third party lockin.

What if Parse goes out of business next week? Do I have to rewrite all my code that talks to them? I guess I could abstract it enough at the get go to prepare for this.

I think an open source project that isn't tied to a third party would be great.

Re: Parse launches JavaScript SDK: Parse for Websites

#26

Post by nanijoe »

arturadib wrote: post #22

Hats off. Parse is the first of all these backend-as-a-service startups to face and solve the biggest problem in the web context: user authentication and data security. By offering a full signup service with email verification and user-level control over the database they have eliminated perhaps the most redundant piece of work that just about every web app has had to implement. Lock-in is of course a concern, but th…

I really wish they charged by something other than API requests..as it stands now, I would not even know a reasonable way to pass on the cost to my users.

Re: Parse launches JavaScript SDK: Parse for Websites

#27

Post by peripitea »

lacker wrote: post #8
taylorbuley wrote: post #2

Can anyone explain to me how authentication works with JS-based storage client like this? It scares me to think a user might have the ability to store anything via the web on my dime. I feel like I'm missing something.

There are two main types of security. Object-level, and app-level. Each object gets access controls that are similar to ACLs in Unix systems. That provides for the sort of security that separates different users' data from each other. On an app-level, you can also control per-class which operations are usable. For more detail, see: https://parse.com/docs/data#security You should be able use these in combination to se…

I still don't get how I, as a malicious (or curious) user with some form of write permission, would be prevented from doing the equivalent of opening up Firebug console and typing while(true){var p = new Post(); p.save();}

Re: Parse launches JavaScript SDK: Parse for Websites

#30

Post by nbclark »

My take on Parse is that they do the grunt work that is necessary with every new project. I am currently building an iPad game on top of parse, and while the pricing is a bit concerning, I figure one of two things will happen:

1) The game takes off and the $200/mo is affordable 2) The game doesn't take off and the 5mil requests is adequate.

The lock-in concerns are valid, but right now their API isn't so mature that it would take eons to build out the pieces I am using in a week or two.

As for the concern with them going out of business, they've raised a good bit of funding, and offer data dumps so you can migrate elsewhere if need be.

For me, right now the ease of development outweighs the risk (we'll see in time though...)

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