Migrating from parse.com

4
votes

Say I have 10K users for my app and I want to switch to my own custom server for backend. I have seen the Parse export functionality but I don't get how it can help me in this situation.

  1. I mean even if I export all data and make updates to app so that it makes calls to my new custom server, still, it will take months for all my users to use updated version of app(many users don't update immediately, my last update on fb was year ago).
  2. Also, during this transition half of my users would be having their data on my custom server and other half(those who haven't updated) would be using parse server, so for queries that require all data in one place this becomes an issue (I could solve this via replication but imagine how slow it would be in realtime to push the data to both - my server and parse.com).

Has anyone thought about this ?

2
parse-platform
write a repeatible exp/import DB migration. Have your new app -> new backend ready on app store. Turn off delete the parse app && push new version of the app. Users that do not immediately upgrade will get all ERRors from old version as the back-end disappeared. - Robert Rowntree

2 Answers

4
votes

What you could do is when you release a new version of your app, when a user logs in and they are on parse, migrate their data at that point to the new server and from that point on that user uses the custom server. That way users move to the new server as they upgrade, I always have a flag that is fetched from my server to force the user to upgrade if is needed. Hope that helps.

0
votes

Copying data over to your new backend periodically until you have finalize your mobile client code and then allow the user to update their app on the App Store or Google Play Store would provide the switch over. Doing that elegantly would be dependent on the type of app and user base you have for the app. I wrote up a part 1 of a blog on these considerations for migrating over from Parse to Couchbase Mobile stack and the reasons why to consider the stack.

If you can already attach a new system in place to have new data in two places (Parse and customer backend) then the copy and merge in the future might be easier to handle but this is case by case. Then when on mobile app update, you can depreciate the server. Or push data to have local store for those users who will be on older versions since Parse will eventually stop working. Any new experiences will require update to the new App version.