Parse Server on Apple Silicon in Docker

This repo allows macOS users running Apple Silicon to start a Parse Server + MongoDB that supports debugging CloudCode. I built this because I wanted to isolate Parse & Mongo in a container. I published it because I found that getting this container running on Apple Silicon was somewhat non-trivial due to issues with mongo's aarch64 support.

I'm building on Back4App so I followed their local environment guide and their YouTube Guide.

WARNING - This container has no security and is meant for local development only. Do not expose this container outside your local machine.

Features

• Parse Server with Logs (see /logs)
• Parse Dashboard
• Parse CloudCode w/Debugging & Hot Reload in VSCode

Requirements

• macOS on Apple Silicon
• Docker

Getting Started

After cloning the repo, update your Parse client application's call to Parse.initialize to use the following parameters:

• applicationId: APPLICATION_ID
• clientKey: CLIENT_KEY
• javascriptKey: JAVASCRIPT_KEY
• masterKey: MASTER_KEY
• serverUrl: http://localhost:1337/parse

Next, update the volume path in docker-compose.yml to point to your app's CloudCode folder. For example, let's assume your CloudCode is at ~/parse/cloud.

# Change this line...
- ./cloud:/app/cloud:ro

# To this...
- ~/parse/cloud:/app/cloud:ro

Now you can build the container and verify it's working.

# Build and start container
docker compose up --build --force-recreate

# Call CloudCode function to ensure it's working
curl -X POST http://localhost:1337/parse/functions/hello \
  -H "X-Parse-Application-Id: APPLICATION_ID" \
  -H "X-Parse-Client-Key: CLIENT_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{}'

You can now use the container with your Parse application. If you make changes to the container you can restart it with these commands.

# Restart container
docker compose down
docker compose up --build --force-recreate

You're now up and running and can see your data running in the Parse Dashboard and can debug your CloudCode. If you want to open a bash shell in the Parse server, here's your command.

docker compose exec parse bash

Debugging CloudCode

This repo supports debugging in VS Code via the .vscode/launch.json. After starting your container, follow these steps to debug your CloudCode.

1. Open this project in VS Code.
2. Open a CloudCode file (e.g. cloud/functions.js).
3. Set a breakpoint.
4. Run -> Start Debugging
5. Call the CloudCode function, e.g. in a shell, use curl as shown above.
6. View verbose debug logs of parse-server in Docker app.

To Do

1. Support hot reloading of CloudCode - not sure this works yet.