Integrating Parse Dashboard?

[kulshekhar]

RethinkDB has a fantastic web interface for administering it. However, given that Horizon is aimed at developers who want to minimize backend related tasks, would it make sense to try and integrate Parse dashboard in?

Since Parse dashboard works with Parse server, I imagine that it gets most of its data using REST (or REST like) calls to Parse server. Based on an initial (and limited understanding) it seems to me that any back-end that exposes the data and metadata required by Parse dashboard could be integrated with it.

If my understanding is right, this would mean that just by implementing and exposing the required endpoints (hopefully without any architectural changes), Horizon could make use of a tool that is understood and used by a lot of users that Horizon is being built for.

The familiarity of the dashboard alone might make Horizon attractive to a lot of existing Parse users. If you consider all the goodness that RethinkDB offers over MongoDB, it would become almost a no brainer, at least for new projects.

[msavin]

This could be cool - certainly a way I'd wish Meteor had gone. I tried to do something reasonable there with Meteor Toys. However, I think the key is to build a Horizon-specific tooling instead of trying to fit Horizon into an interface.

[kulshekhar]

I think the key is to build a Horizon-specific tooling instead of trying to fit Horizon into an interface

If (and this is a big if) something like the Parse dashboard could be used just by implementing a few Express routes, there would be no need to build Horizon specific tooling for this particular purpose from scratch. On the face of it, that's all that seems to be required to get the Browser part of the dashboard working with something other than Parse server.

This could probably be an add-on or something similar to the GraphQL adapter that is planned.

[mglukhovsky]

We're working on a Horizon interface right now -- it'll be minimal but useful, and hopefully will plant a seed for contributions and suggestions on where to take it. Ultimately, alternate interfaces should be relatively easy to add with add-ons.

You'll also always be able to get access to the RethinkDB dashboard as well.

What specific features would you like to see in a Horizon dashboard / UI?

[kulshekhar]

The most important feature for me would be the Browser section from the Parse dashboard. If you're not familiar with it, it allows users to do the following:

• Create and manage classes (essentially tables, in RethinkDB terms)
• View and edit data in these tables from the web interface
• Manage fine grained access control to records and tables (not sure if this is planned for Horizon)

Of course, there are other parts of Parse dashboard that have utility too (cloud code, webhooks, etc) but the Browser should would be a relatively straightforward part to start with.

[fson]

Parse Dashboard is pretty nice and when they made the source available I also wanted to modify it for use in my own project. However I found the license of the Dashboard very restrictive in terms of how you can use and modify it. It's not licensed with an open source license, but a custom proprietary license that doesn't allow modifications, except for internal use. I've opened an issue about this in the parse-dashboard repository.

It is unclear to me, if the license would even allow Parse Dashboard to be integrated with Horizon, at least unless it is done without any modifications to the Dashboard. That would mean adding the whole Parse server API, which doesn't seem like the best way forwards.

[kulshekhar]

doesn't this comment make it clear that Parse Dashboard can be modified and distributed in custom applications?

[kulshekhar]

It is unclear to me, if the license would even allow Parse Dashboard to be integrated with Horizon, at least unless it is done without any modifications to the Dashboard

Actually, this was my original intention - to find out if it is possible use Parse Dashboard without spending the effort on modifying it. If there's going to be a need to modify or customize then it would make more sense to start a new project (as is apparently happening) using the tools/frameworks that developers here are more comfortable with.

[fson]

@kulshekhar They added the part that says you can "modify the Software for your own internal use" (emphasis mine). It's not clear what constitutes "internal use".

Using Parse dashboard without making any modifications to it doesn't sound trivial. Wouldn't it mean basically replicating all the functionality of Parse Server, including the REST APIs to read/write data, modify the schema etc.?

[kulshekhar]

@fson thanks for pointing that out. Upon reading the license again, I'd have to agree with your concerns.

As for the integration, since I was primarily interested in the Browser functionality of PD, I assumed that the only extra work would be for implementing the fetching and storing of the metadata related to the classes/tables. As Horizon would allow reading and writing data to custom tables anyways, the most that'd be needed would be a thin generic translator layer that would map PD calls to calls that Horizon understands and serves and vice versa.

[segphault]

You can track the progress of our admin dashboard on issue #154. It might be a little simple in the initial release, but we'd really like to eventually have a fully-featured data browser and support for interactively inspecting and replaying requests.

I think we can take advantage of the unique features of the Horizon backend to build a custom dashboard that will display realtime updates and generally integrate better with our system than a third party option. That said, we can absolutely learn from some of the design and feature decisions that Parse made and we appreciate any feedback you have about the specific features and capabilities that you'd like to see.

[deontologician]

Closing in favor of #154