[trextrex]

I spent nearly 15 minutes on the parse website but still can't figure out what it does. All I see is that it's an open source version of the Parse API. But what is the Parse API?

Since you've used it before, would you care to elaborate on what the Parse API does?

[chatmasta]

They were originally "backend as a service," basically a smart layer over mongo. They charged pretty obscene rates per request, but now it's all open source so no worries about that.

They provide a nice dashboard for creating Mongo collections (which they call Classes).

You write "cloud code" in JavaScript. You can write beforeSave and afterSave functions which are triggered before/after you save a document. You can also write "cloud functions" which execute within parse-server and interact with the database.

The result of this is that you can perform a lot of heavy lifting and consistency logic in one place, "the cloud." That way you can build clients in multiple languages (like an iOS app, Android app, web app) that only need to worry about their platform specific details.

Their original value prop was for building mobile apps, but since the ecosystem is pretty mature with a client in every language, I find the benefits extend to writing multiple clients for any purpose.

[rahimnathwani]

I'm curious: did you consider using Flask as a back-end, instead of parse-server? Is parse-server just easier than coding your own API back-end with Flask and whichever db you like?

[chatmasta]

No. That would effectively mean reimplementing all the logic of parse-server in flask. And when I was done doing that, I wouldn't have a client library in every language ready to interact with my backend.

Parse-server is definitely a faster way to start because it's already an API layer in front of the database.