deploying-aws-ubuntu.md

Deploying on AWS EC2 Ubuntu using PostgreSQL

Here are the steps:

1. Log into your AWS account or create a new one AWS Account
2. Go to AWS EC2 Dashboard
3. Launch Instances
4. On Application and OS Images (Amazon Machine Image) select Ubuntu
5. On Instance Type select t2.micro (is ok for testing and small projects which is Free tier eligible)
6. Create or select an existing key pair. (If you create a new one click Download Key Pair)
7. Click Launch Instance
8. On EC2 Dashboard select the new created instance and click Security
9. On Security Groups, click on the security group
10. On Inbound Rules tab, click Edit Inbound Rules
11. Click Add rule and select PostgreSQL from the dropdown menu and Anywhere-IPv4.
12. Click Save rules
13. On EC2 Dashboard select the new created instance and click Connect
14. Click SSH Client and follow the instructions

Once logged into the ec2 instance we perform the following tasks:

Install Libraries and Dependencies

Update the local package manager apt

sudo apt update

Install NodeJS

sudo apt install nodejs

Check the install was ok, you should see the version installed.

node -v

Install npm

sudo apt install npm

Install yarn

sudo npm install yarn -g

Install PostgreSQL Server

Install PostgreSQL

sudo apt-get -y install postgresql

Once is installed, create a password for the user postgres

sudo su postgres

psql

ALTER USER postgres password 'myStrongPassword';

Quit psql typing \q

Exit postgres user typing exit

Navigate to main folder inside postgresql/version/

cd /etc/postgresql/14/main/

We need to edit two files, pg_hba.conf and postgresql.conf

sudo nano -w pg_hba.conf

Scroll down the file and Add host, all, all, 0.0.0.0/0, md5, has to be the first line before local, all, postgres, , peer

TYPE	DATABASE	USER	ADDRESS	METHOD
host	all	all	0.0.0.0/0	md5
local	all	postgres		peer
{: .docs_table}

Close the file and save the changes with Control+X and Y

sudo nano -w postgresql.conf

Search for #listen_addresses='localhost', uncomment the line and replace localhost for *

Close the file and save the changes with Control+X and Y

Restart the PostgreSQL server

sudo service postgresql restart

Setup Parse Server

Create a folder called parse-server

cd ~ && mkdir parse-server && cd parse-server

Install Parse Server Locally

sudo yarn add parse-server

Edit the package.json file with your preferences, but do not change the start line inside the scripts.

{
  "name": "my-app",
  "description": "parse-server for my App",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "parse-server config.json"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "parse-server": "^5.2.1"
  }
}

Close the file and save the changes with Control+X and Y

After that, we need to create a configuration file, use your own appId, masterKey and clientKey, use random strings or some generator tool to create secured keys.

sudo nano -w config.json

{
  "appId": "exampleAppId",
  "masterKey": "exampleMasterKey",
  "appName": "MyApp",
  "serverURL": "http://<IP_OR_DOMAIN>",
  "mountPath": "/parse",
  "publicServerURL": "http://<IP_OR_DOMAIN>",
  "databaseURI": "postgres://postgres:myStrongPassword@localhost:5432/postgres"
}

Close the file and save the changes with Control+X and Y

This are the basic options of the config.json file, for the full list you can type parse-server --help or refer to the full options document for more details.

Start Parse Server using the script command in the package.json

npm start

Check if Parse Server is running typing http://<IP_OR_DOMAIN>:1337 in your browser's address bar, you should see {"error":"unauthorized"}, that means the server is running.

To daemonized parse-server to keep it running and alive all the time, you can use the package PM2.

Shutdown Parse Server pressing Control+C.

Check if PM2 is installed

npm list --depth 0 -g pm2

If the terminal shows /usr/lib/(empty), means that PM2 is not installed, procced to install PM2 package globally

sudo npm install pm2 -g

Add Parse Server to PM2

pm2 start npm --name "parse-server" -- start

Save and syncronize this list

pm2 save

Setup Parse Dashboard

Install Parse Dashboard globally

sudo npm install -g parse-dashboard

Once installed, you need to configure Parse Dashboard, go to /usr/lib/node_modules/parse-dashboard/Parse-Dashboard/ and edit the file parse-dashboard-config.json

sudo nano -w parse-dashboard-config.json

This is an example of parse-dashboard.config.json.

{
	"apps": [{
		"serverURL": "http://example.com:1337/parse",
		"appId": "exampleAppId",
		"masterKey": "exampleMasterKey",
		"allowInsecureHTTP": "true",
		"appName": "MyApp"
	}],
	"users": [{
		"user": "admin",
		"pass": "password"
	}]
}

Start Parse Dashboard

parse-dashboard

Check if Parse Dashboard is running typing http://<IP_OR_DOMAIN>:4040 in your browser's address bar, you should see the login form, use the user and pass that you set in the parse-dashboard-config.json file.

Shutdown Parse Dashboard pressing Control+C.

Add Parse Dashboard to the process manager PM2

pm2 start parse-dashboard

Save and syncronize PM2 list

pm2 save

Adding Parse Server and Parse Dashboard to PM2, will ensure that if the server restarts or reboot for some reason, this two apps will be relaunched automatically. PM2 stores the logs in a subfolder called logs where the apps are. To sneak peek the logs you can run pm2 logs in the terminal.

Note: if you are using a secure certificate in your host, be sure to modify the urls related to your configuration in the examples above from http to https.