[Discussion] Parse dashboard as mobile application?

Hey guys. I was thinking that maybe parse server should have a mobile dashboard? What do you think about that? Is this topic discussed anywhere before?

One possible problem with this: How are we gonna distrubute ios app? For android we can build an APK and people can download from github. But for IOS we need to upload it to app store. Handling app store can be tricky. Like who will be responsible for app store? There is also membership cost which is 99$ per year.

What do you think about this?

I think that’s a good idea. Maybe the community can handle the costs. Another idea could be a progressive web app.

I was thinking a cross platform solution with react native. I will start work on this. Let me see what I can do.

2 Likes

Hey guys. I started coding mobile dashboard. I want your ideas about design before it’s too hard to change. This is current state. I choose bottom bar for navigation instead of side menu like web. Bottom navigation feels nicer on mobile. What do you think?

1 Like

The bottom bar is a good UI element if:

  • you know today that you won’t need more than 5 items in the future
  • each of these items are heavily used by users; if an item is not heavily used it would be placed somewhere else to not take up priority screen estate

Very nice work! If you want we can create a new official Parse repository parse-dashboard-mobile for the mobile app where you can develop this and use all the GitHub feature to get feedback. We can also pin a call across this forum and the Parse Dashboard repository on GitHub to help you get the community engaged.

Below are some implemented dashboards for iOS and Android:

Can download from the App Store here:

There’s also an Android one:

Play store link:

1 Like

What would be the advantage of developing a native / cross-platform mobile app, compared to web app with a proper responsive layout?

If the time is invested in rewriting the somewhat outdated Parse Dashboard with a multi-skin layout for desktop and mobile, wouldn’t that have a greater benefit? It would create a common code base for a versatile dashboard app that is much easier to maintain. That is likely the very reason why the two native mobile apps Corey mentioned have not been updated anymore since 2-3 years. It’s 2 additional code bases to maintain, in addition to the Parse Dashboard which also has a (although less refined) mobile layout. A web app that is written in JS allows for contribution by a large community group, than a specific cross-platform framework that not many developers may be familiar with.

@cbaker6 thank you I will look into them.

Even with proper responsive layout user still have to host it somewhere. But you don’t need to host mobile app. You can download it from play/app store.

Current dashboard is written with React. React and React native has same core principals. In react native you use pre-defined ui elements instead of html. A react developer can be comfortable with react native pretty easily or visa versa.
For example Coinbase switched to React Native. Here is a quote from their blog posts.

As of today Coinbase’s React Native repo has 113 contributors, including a large number of web engineers

Source: https://blog.coinbase.com/announcing-coinbases-successful-transition-to-react-native-af4c591df971

It will be another code base that’s true. But if it will be useful for the comunity, I say why not? But It doesn’t have to be part of the official repo. I can continue this a a side project. Mobile dashboard is just something I wish I had before. We can open a poll to learn what community thinks.

Sure, by all means, it’s an interesting undertaking. It may just be fun and an interesting learning process. I just wanted to point out that there are apparently well designed native mobile apps in personal repos that are stale now for years, possibly both for the same reason. Maybe something to consider, depending on the purpose of your project.

Current dashboard is written with React.

That is super cool, I thought you mentioned Xamarin, not sure where I read this. Excited to see where this is going.

you don’t need to host mobile app.

Right, do you store the user credentials in Parse Server?

I’m using react native.

By user credentials, do you mean appId, masterKey and serverUrl? If yes, they are stored locally in async storage if user enable remember me option.

I will work in this. And if it turns out something good maybe we can move it to official parse repo. Currently it’s in early stage for that.

I mean the username and password to log into the app. Ok, I understand now, you require the user to directly enter the master key to access the server, so there is no user based login as currently with the dashboard. Well, I think user management could be implemented easily with Parse Parse at some point in the future.

Is there any mobile web application for parse dashboard now? What is the git url?

Thanks.

For now, only available ones are the ones that shared by @cbaker6. The one I started to develop is still at the beginning because I don’t have much time right now and its not my priority.

I finally have free time and will start work on this. But instead of using react-native-cli, I will use expo since latest version of expo now can build with native libraries.

2 Likes