kami-parse-server/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Parse Server

We really want Parse to be yours, to see it grow and thrive in the open source community.

If you are not familiar with Pull Requests and want to know more about them, you can visit the Creating a pull request article. It contains detailed informations about the process.

Setting up the project for debugging and contributing:

Recommended setup:

• vscode, the popular IDE.
• Jasmine Test Explorer, a very practical test exploration plugin which let you run, debug and see the test results inline.

Setting up you local machine:

• Fork this project and clone the fork on your local machine:

$ git clone https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server
$ cd parse-server # go into the clone directory
$ npm install # install all the node dependencies
$ code . # launch vscode
$ npm run watch # run babel watching for local file changes

To launch VS Code from the terminal with the code command you first need to follow the launching from the command line section in the VS Code setup documentation.

Once you have babel running in watch mode, you can start making changes to parse-server.

Good to know:

• The lib/ folder is not commited, so never make changes in there.
• Always make changes to files in the src/ folder.
• All the tests should point to sources in the lib/ folder.

Troubleshooting:

Question: I modify the code in the src folder but it doesn't seem to have any effect.
Answer: Check that npm run watch is running

Question: How do I use breakpoints and debug step by step?
Answer: The easiest way is to install Jasmine Test Explorer, it will let you run selectively tests and debug them.

Question: How do I deploy my forked version on my servers?
Answer: In your package.json, update the parse-server dependency to https://github.com/MY_USERNAME/parse-server#MY_FEATURE. Run npm install, commit the changes and deploy to your servers.

Please Do's

• Begin by reading the Development Guide to learn how to get started running the parse-server.
• Take testing seriously! Aim to increase the test coverage with every pull request. To obtain the test coverage of the project, run: npm run coverage
• Run the tests for the file you are working on with the following command: npm test spec/MyFile.spec.js
• Run the tests for the whole project to make sure the code passes all tests. This can be done by running the test command for a single file but removing the test file argument. The results can be seen at <PROJECT_ROOT>/coverage/lcov-report/index.html.
• Lint your code by running npm run lint to make sure the code is not going to be rejected by the CI.
• Do not publish the lib folder.

Run your tests against Postgres (optional)

If your pull request introduces a change that may affect the storage or retrieval of objects, you may want to make sure it plays nice with Postgres.

• Run the tests against the postgres database with PARSE_SERVER_TEST_DB=postgres PARSE_SERVER_TEST_DATABASE_URI=postgres://postgres:password@localhost:5432/parse_server_postgres_adapter_test_database npm run testonly. You'll need to have postgres running on your machine and setup appropriately or use Docker.

• The Postgres adapter has a special debugger that traces all the sql commands. You can enable it with setting the environment variable PARSE_SERVER_LOG_LEVEL=debug

• If your feature is intended to only work with MongoDB, you should disable PostgreSQL-specific tests with:

  • describe_only_db('mongo') // will create a describe that runs only on mongoDB
  • it_only_db('mongo') // will make a test that only runs on mongo
  • it_exclude_dbs(['postgres']) // will make a test that runs against all DB's but postgres

• Similarly, if your feature is intended to only work with PostgreSQL, you should disable MongoDB-specific tests with:

  • describe_only_db('postgres') // will create a describe that runs only on postgres
  • it_only_db('postgres') // will make a test that only runs on postgres
  • it_exclude_dbs(['mongo']) // will make a test that runs against all DB's but mongo

• If your feature is intended to work with MongoDB and PostgreSQL, you can include or exclude tests more granularly with:

  • it_only_mongodb_version('>=4.4') // will test with any version of Postgres but only with version >=4.4 of MongoDB; accepts semver notation to specify a version range
  • it_exclude_mongodb_version('<4.4') // will test with any version of Postgres and MongoDB, excluding version <4.4 of MongoDB; accepts semver notation to specify a version range

Run Postgres setup for Parse with Docker

PostGIS images (select one with v2.2 or higher) on docker dashboard is based off of the official postgres image and will work out-of-the-box (as long as you create a user with the necessary extensions for each of your Parse databases; see below). To launch the compatible Postgres instance, copy and paste the following line into your shell:

docker run -d --name parse-postgres -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password --rm postgis/postgis:11-3.0-alpine && sleep 20 && docker exec -it parse-postgres psql -U postgres -c 'CREATE DATABASE parse_server_postgres_adapter_test_database;' && docker exec -it parse-postgres psql -U postgres -c 'CREATE EXTENSION postgis;' -d parse_server_postgres_adapter_test_database && docker exec -it parse-postgres psql -U postgres -c 'CREATE EXTENSION postgis_topology;' -d parse_server_postgres_adapter_test_database

To stop the Postgres instance:

docker stop parse-postgres

You can also use the postgis/postgis:11-2.5-alpine image in a Dockerfile and copy this script to the image by adding the following lines:

#Install additional scripts. These are run in abc order during initial start
COPY ./scripts/setup-dbs.sh /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/setup-dbs.sh
RUN chmod +x /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/setup-dbs.sh

Note that the script above will ONLY be executed during initialization of the container with no data in the database, see the official Postgres image for details. If you want to use the script to run again be sure there is no data in the /var/lib/postgresql/data of the container.

Feature Considerations

Security Checks

The Parse Server security checks feature warns developers about weak security settings in their Parse Server deployment.

A security check needs to be added for every new feature or enhancement that allows the developer to configure it in a way that weakens security mechanisms or exposes functionality which creates a weak spot for malicious attacks. If you are not sure whether your feature or enhancements requires a security check, feel free to ask.

For example, allowing public read and write to a class may be useful to simplify development but should be disallowed in a production environment.

Security checks are added in SecurityChecks.js.

Parse Error

Introducing new Parse Errors requires the following steps:

1. Research whether an existing Parse Error already covers the error scenario. Keep in mind that reusing an already existing Parse Error does not allow to distinguish between scenarios in which the same error is thrown, so it may be necessary to add a new and more specific Parse Error, eventhough an more general Parse Error already exists. ⚠️ Currently (as of Dec. 2020), there are inconsistencies between the Parse Errors documented in the Parse Guides, coded in the Parse JS SDK and coded in Parse Server, therefore research regarding the availability of error codes has to be conducted in all of these sources.
2. Add the new Parse Error to /src/ParseError.js in the Parse JavaScript SDK. This is the primary reference for Parse Errors for the Parse JavaScript SDK and Parse Server.
3. Create a pull request for the Parse JavaScript SDK including the new Parse Errors. The PR needs to be merged and a new Parse JS SDK version needs to be released.
4. Change the Parse JS SDK dependency in package.json of Parse Server to the newly released Parse JS SDK version, so that the new Parse Error is recognized by Parse Server.
5. When throwing the new Parse Error in code, do not hard-code the error code but instead reference the error code from the Parse Error. For example:

   throw new Parse.Error(Parse.Error.EXAMPLE_ERROR_CODE, 'Example error message.');
   

6. Choose a descriptive error message that provdes more details about the specific error scenario. Different error messages may be used for the same error code. For example:

   throw new Parse.Error(Parse.Error.FILE_SAVE_ERROR, 'The file could not be saved because it exceeded the maximum allowed file size.');
   throw new Parse.Error(Parse.Error.FILE_SAVE_ERROR, 'The file could not be saved because the file format was incorrect.');
   

7. Add the new Parse Error to the docs.

Parse Server Configuration

Introducing new Parse Server configuration parameters requires the following steps:

1. Add parameters definitions in /src/Options/index.js.
2. If a nested configuration object has been added, add the environment variable option prefix to getENVPrefix in /resources/buildConfigDefinition.js.
3. Execute npm run definitions to automatically create the definitions in /src/Options/Definitions.js and /src/Options/docs.js.
4. Add parameter value validation in /src/Config.js.
5. Add test cases to ensure the correct parameter value validation. Parse Server throws an error at launch if an invalid value is set for any configuration parameter.
6. Execute npm run docs to generate the documentation in the /out directory. Take a look at the documentation whether the description and formatting of the newly introduced parameters is satisfactory.

Code of Conduct

This project adheres to the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct. By participating, you are expected to honor this code.