parse-server VS PostgreSQL

Backend as a Service (BaaS) goes back to early 2010’s with companies like Parse and Firebase. These products integrated everything a backend provides to a webapp in a single, integrated package that makes it easier to get started and enables you to offload some of the devops maintenance work to someone else.

Prototype Pollution Fix

Parse Server is a great way to quickly spin up a backend for your project. Parse is a Node based utility that sits on top of ExpressJS.

Parse

You can try https://parseplatform.org/, it is self-hosted if you need. And also there are a number of cloud services with compatible API, like https://www.back4app.com/ It has dart-friendly generated API client, much simpler than firebase and is built on top of postgresql and mongodb.

Parse - https://parseplatform.org/

Not to crash the party or anything. Supabase is great and all but in terms of feature completeness and getting actual products built, it doesn't come close to Parse[0].

Same with Appwrite. Both of these are very popular but they either lack essential features or have them behind a subscription wall. For example, the OSS version of Supabase (last I checked) doesn't include the edge functions which are really important for easily computing stuff on the server side. Parse on the other hand is 100% open source and has a huge feature set. It's older than all of these lo-code tools and actually helps solve the issues one comes across when using such tools.

Another thing is extending these tools which is a pain. For example, Parse supports multiple databases by default (postgres & MongoDB) and the ability to write a custom adapter if you need something else. Similarly, if you at any point need to go 100% custom it also makes that possible so you are never locked in. These tools however don't have that level of low-level control and are general all or nothing kind of tools best for small-to-medium sized problems which don't have a lot of room to grow.

But both of these (Appwrite & Supabase) are super markety. Appwrite is all over the place with their ads, Supabase got a huge trend when it launched etc. Parse on the other hand is not too good at marketing their product being fully community run which is one reason not many know of it. Another is their not-so-fancy docs.

I have no stake in any of these products: just my conclusion after having tried all of these.

[0] https://parseplatform.org/

SQL (Structured Query Language) databases are relational databases. They organize data into tables with rows and columns, and they use SQL for querying and managing data. Examples include MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.

Node.js, MySQL and PostgreSQL servers installed on your machine

Each app’s front end is built with Qwik and uses Tailwind for styling. The server-side is powered by Qwik City (Qwik’s official meta-framework) and runs on Node.js hosted on a shared Linode VPS. The apps also use PM2 for process management and Caddy as a reverse proxy and SSL provisioner. The data is stored in a PostgreSQL database that also runs on a shared Linode VPS. The apps interact with the database using Drizzle, an Object-Relational Mapper (ORM) for JavaScript. The entire infrastructure for both apps is managed with Terraform using the Terraform Linode provider, which was new to me, but made provisioning and destroying infrastructure really fast and easy (once I learned how it all worked).

I've used MySQL for years. But recently, I found myself working PostgreSQL and simple things like dumping and restoring a database are different enough that I decided to document the process. It's straightforward enough once I knew how.

A running Rails application needs a database to connect to. You may already have your database of choice installed, but if not, I recommend PostgreSQL, or Postgres for short. On a Mac, probably the easiest way to install it is with Posrgres.app. Another option, the one I prefer, is to use Homebrew. With Homebrew installed, this command will install PostgreSQL version 16 along with libpq:

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL: Offers a robust feature set and strong compliance with SQL standards, making it suitable for a wide range of applications, from simple to complex, particularly where data integrity and extensibility are key.

FerretDB is an open source document database that adds MongoDB compatibility to other database backends, such as Postgres and SQLite. By using FerretDB, developers can access familiar MongoDB features and tools using the same syntax and commands for many of their use cases.

To better understand how SQL injection works, let's quickly create a vulnerable app using Node.js, Express, and a PostgreSQL database. The application takes user input from a form, constructs a SQL query, and executes it against the database to fetch some data.

We'll use PostgreSQL, and first of all, you need to install PostgreSQL if you haven't installed it yet. https://www.postgresql.org/