Looking for engin.io replacement -joining our effort initiative

[Charby]

Hi all,

I think it would be helpful to create a Qt playground project so we could publish our backend wrappers in a commun repository. I have sent a request for creating the playground project to the development mailing list but I don't know whether it is the way to go...Do you know what is the process to follow to create a playground project ?

So far, I have designed a QML plugin which is a work in progress :

• the plugin only offers for now a Firebase backend element which is quite limited : the only supported authorization method is the secret token id and at this time it is only a thin wrapper around the REST API (GET, DELETE, POST, PATCH and PUT are supported).
• what remains to be done :
  • define and implement an API suitable for supporting multiple backend : one option could be to design an API similar to the former enginio (create, update, query, uploadFile, downloadURL, remove...) but this API relies on backend features that we would have to mimics (users and usergroups, fileref...) so I am not sure this would be the way to go...
  • create a model that could be nicely used from QML like the former enginio model
  • use the Android and iOS sdk depending on the deployed platform (and using the REST sdk otherwise)
  • implement other backend using the same API (cloudant, apigee, BaaSBox...)

I don't know if this does worth to publish this to github or to wait for the creation of a playground qt module...

[gadlim]

@Charby said:

I don't know if this does worth to publish this to github or to wait for the creation of a playground qt module...

I'd say, if you have some code, even WIP, publish it. When discussing specs in a group, actual code can help to keep everyone on the same page.

Given our limited resources, it would help a lot to have only a thin layer of code to add to another, wider audience project (at the moment Qt/QML on mobile is a small audience, sadly). I thinking specifically of Hood.ie. I don't know if it's technically feasible, but using Hoodie as a kind of middleware could save a lot of code; just mimicking its API could be useful too. Of course if (for instance) Hoodie is bound to the browser, we have the same problem as with PouchDB.

[xargs1]

I just finished a pure Qt Quick CouchDB interface (no C++ or plugins) which meets my current needs for storage. It would probably be trivial to get it work with Cloudant, but I'm not interested in adopting yet another BaaS provider that's going to disappear in a month or a year like Enginio and Parse did.

[gadlim]

@xargs1 said:

I just finished a pure Qt Quick CouchDB interface (no C++ or plugins) which meets my current needs for storage. It would probably be trivial to get it work with Cloudant, but I'm not interested in adopting yet another BaaS provider that's going to disappear in a month or a year like Enginio and Parse did.

That's great! A CouchDB interface should be directly pluggable to the Cloudant service. See this. In fact, I gather that IBM is currently a main contributor to CouchDB, and was before the acquisition of Cloudant, which was originally an independant company. Think of Cloudant as CouchDB hosting + benefits.
The situation is different for Enginio because of the closed-source components. OTOH, CouchDB is an Apache project and Cloudant can be self-hosted if you don't like "public" clouds.

As an aside, why Enginio, or a least the main parts, can't be open-sourced is beyond me. Given the competitive nature of the Baas market, not having an "we-failed-commercially-but-here-is-the-source-code" exit plan is disappointing, given the Qt ties to the OSS/Free software world.

[Charby]

@Charby said:
Ok, I will wait a couple of days to see if we could get a playground project to collaborate, otherwise I will create a github (next week) with my project at its current state. I came back a shortwhile looking to Apigee and I think it could be the best candidate I have seen so far, I will keep Firebase in my project but will definetely add an Apigee wrapper in addition.

[gadlim]

@Charby said:

I came back a shortwhile looking to Apigee and I think it could be the best candidate I have seen so far

I've also looked at Apigee a while back and found the pricing plans a bit steep (starting at 300$/month without a datastore). Maybe I misunderstood that page ?

[Charby]

@gadlim You are right (sic) - Actually I missed that pricing page as I jumped directly to the console after having signed a trial free account. Apigee seems to match perfectly what I was looking for (100% RESTfull, push notifications, social login, already builtin collections for assets-users-group, console is complete and powerfull and documentation is comprehensive...). It is a very unclear what are the pricing plan for BaaS...but if it is really 300$/mo (or more) it will be a no go for me...

additional candidates :

• backend (https://www.backand.com/)
• app42 (http://api.shephertz.com/)
• backendless (https://backendless.com/)

[gadlim]

There's also Stamplay (https://stamplay.com/) that has some nice features, and others. The problem with these kind of vendors (Backendless, Stamplay, Backand, Firebase,...) is the lock-in. Like @xargs1, I'm wary of the future of the service, so I'm gravitating towards less black-boxy solutions, at least for the core DB services. For additional services like push, there's tons of options that can be plugged (and changed) separately if needed.
A tie-in to a particular technology (CouchDB or MongoDB for instance) is not ideal either, but it's a big plus if it's an OSS project IMO.

[Charby]

@gadlim I think the lock-in could be acceptable as long as we would use the backend services using a commun Qt API that would have a backup and reload function, don't you think ?
Regarding the push services, what would you advise as possible candidate ?
I have contacted Apigee to have a better understanding of their licence agreement, to summarize :

• the free trial period is supposed to be limited to 30 days but they usually don't stop the trial period after 30 days
• they do not propose a package containing only BaaS, so to get BaaS you need the enterprise-class Edge account which licence fee is around 200k$ yearly (!!!)...

FYI here is the transcript of the chat conversation :

guillaume: at 16:23:33
Hi, I am an independant mobile application developper looking for a backend solution in
replacement of engin.io cloud services (I am using Qt framework). I am evaluating apigee BaaS
which I find great but I am confused with the pricing...
guillaume: at 16:24:45
In the pricing table, the BaaS is checked only for the trial column. what happens after the 30 days
trial period ?
Dylan: at 16:24:51
Well BaaS is only available with our enterprise solution
Dylan: at 16:25:11
You can download the free trial and use as you please
Dylan: at 16:25:33
We are usually not to strict on ending people's trials at the 30 day mark
guillaume: at 16:27:26
Does that mean that I can continue using BaaS for unlimited period as long as I use the API within
the maximal API calls ?
Dylan: at 16:28:35
I wouldn't say unlimited but you can continue to use it and if you have any issues please reach out
to us
guillaume: at 16:29:44
What would be the price for using BaaS only ?
Dylan: at 16:30:38
You have to have our enterprise Edge version to use Apigee BaaS
guillaume: at 16:31:51
I haven't found the price of edge version, and I think that this package contains much more than
my current needs.
Dylan: at 16:32:02
We have Start Up and SMB Edge versions as well but they do not come with BaaS
Dylan: at 16:33:27
Enterprise Edge starts at 200K a year is that within your budget? If not, you are not going to be
able to use a paid version of Apigee BaaS.
guillaume: at 16:35:20
It is definitely not within my budget unfortunately...do you plan to propose a package for indie
(with BaaS only) that I could propose to my customer in addition with the mobile development ?
guillaume: at 16:37:19
My typical use case would be to develop a mobile application using apigee for a customer and to
sell the product. The customer would have to pay for Apigee services fee (+variable cost
depending of API usage)
guillaume: at 16:37:55
Is this kind of package offering already in your roadmap ?
Dylan: at 16:40:19
16/2/2016 about:blank
about:blank 2/2
Would you like to go to one of our Expert Sessions to learn more about our platform and see if we
could be a fit for your customers?
guillaume: at 16:42:27
If I have to invest time on Apigee I would need to ensure the business model is relevant for my
customers...
Dylan: at 16:44:34
Well if you need Apigee BaaS and you don't have a six figure budget then this platform is most
likely not going to suit your needs. If Apigee BaaS is a nice to have and you are interested in our
SMB or Start Up API Management solutions then I suggest attending a session.
guillaume: at 16:44:52
Depending of the project, I sell the development of mobile application several thousand of euros
(one shot). These application usually needs datastore, authentification and push notification. I
think most of my customers could afford to pay a couple of hundred dollars of reccurent fee for
the backend services
Dylan: at 16:45:56
Okay, we do have authentification and push notifications.
Dylan: at 16:46:26
http://apigee.com/about/products/api-management
guillaume: at 16:49:57
will that mean that my in my typical use case, let's say a company order a small application using
datastore, push notification, and authentification...It would cost let's say 5k$ for my development
but the customer would have to get a edge account (200k$ yearly) to continue using the app ?
Dylan: at 16:50:29
The Edge package that they need depends on their API call volume
Dylan: at 16:50:47
http://apigee.com/about/pricing/apigee-edge-pricing-features
guillaume: at 16:51:53
but they would need a Edge account (enterprise account) which you told me is around 200k$
yearly
Dylan: at 16:52:22
No, they only need an enterprise level account if they want BaaS
Dylan: at 16:52:42
BaaS is not available on the SMB or Start Up level subscriptions
Dylan: at 16:53:04
Without BaaS they could definitely choose one of the cheaper versions
guillaume: at 16:55:42
My understanding is that you are currently not proposing a BaaS only package (much cheaper
than edge) for mobile application...do you think this could be proposed in a near future ?
Dylan: at 16:56:29
I am not sure if we will offer that but yes we do not have a standalone BaaS offering at the
moment
guillaume: at 16:56:59
ok thanks.
Dylan: at 16:57:31
Have a nice day

[Charby]

To help synthesize the results of our evaluation of the different BaaS services, I propose to work on a commun document where we could all insert/edit the solutions we know (and also correct each other). I have started this google sheet for this purpose : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NoSQq2CtxDZEPTwe_1f2bmrB4BT4BRNeEj4qGdXa9S8/edit?usp=sharing

feel free to modify/update !

[gadlim]

@Charby said:

@gadlim I think the lock-in could be acceptable as long as we would use the backend services using a commun Qt API that would have a backup and reload function, don't you think ?

Yes, but a real, production-ready, common Qt API is a hard task. We're not there yet.

Regarding the push services, what would you advise as possible candidate ?

I haven't used any (using Pushbullet but that's different), so can't really advise.

[gadlim]

@Charby said:

To help synthesize the results of our evaluation of the different BaaS services, I propose to work on a commun document where we could all insert/edit the solutions we know (and also correct each other).
feel free to modify/update !

Good idea but wrong link

[Charby]

@gadlim Hopefully you have seen it quickly ! I have updated the link (could you please remove the link in your reply ?) - thanks !

[gadlim]

@gadlim said:

Follow-up on my Cloudant evaluation: I ran into problems trying to figure out how to encrypt user passwords.
I'll have a conversation on that subject with IBMers tomorrow.
I hope to also discuss the broader subject of whether Cloudant is a good fit for 2-tiers apps (no server code, or almost no server code).

Follow-up to the follow-up:

• user passwords have to be manually-encoded (not a big deal but annoying)
• 2-tiers apps; not a perfect fit, for the above reason and others

Coming from Enginio (MongoDB), the migration can be painful. The main problem is that it's not as much "forget-there's-even-a-database" as MongoDB is. For instance you don't have the concept of the collection, so if you treat each collection as a separate DB in CouchDB, you have to manage different DBs, and for each DB you have to think ahead about the indexes you need (in MongoDB indexes are are not mandatory for queries).
In contrast, the Parse REST API is eerily similar to the Enginio API. There's not so many ways to implement a REST API over MongoDB, but still you have to wonder if Enginio used Parse.com as an inspiration.

In my case, I'm running out of time and have a fair amount of code to port, so my choice is made: I'll go with a Parse Server hosting. There's several options, I think I'll go with IBM Bluemix. I've followed the instructions to setup a Parse server, it involved a whole day of trial-and-error but it's working, and I've ported our main app in less than a day - it's just a matter of tweaking some parameters. It's not fully working yet because of the fact that Parse only sends back the ID of new objects instead of the whole objects, but it's still ten times easier than other options.

Porting the Enginio SDK to Parse Server or anything similar should be easy too.

[Charby]

@gadlim regarding the user passwords, If I am correct, there are 2 different methods, one can either base64 encode username:password to be passed as header (with "Basic " as a prefix) or you can post with something like this :

QUrlQuery postData;
postData.addQueryItem("name", user);
postData.addQueryItem("password", password);
QNetworkAccessManager NAM;
NAM.post(request, postData.toString(QUrl::FullyEncoded).toUtf8());

I don't really understand the 2-tiers issue as you can directly use Cloudant i.o Cloudant through BlueMix, what would be your concern in this case ?

I have spend the last days playing with BlueMix (as I need to set up Push Notification) but regarding Cloudant I came to same conclusions that this lack of collection principle might be an issue for porting enginio apps...Firebase seems to be a much better candidate in this field (and Firebase has a powerfull mecanism to notify asynchronously when new data comes in - in replacement of enginion web socket - and I haven't found something similar with Cloudant...that would be another issue when polling is not an option).

I am very interested in the Parse Server hosting solution...I thought Parse was a no go as they are ramping down the services this year...do FB plans to release Parse to opensource (or did they already do ?). BTW, do you know what are their reasons for stopping the service ?
-Edit - replying to myself ;-) - Parse.com did release to opensource the datastore which is great - but the not the complete Parse solution (social login, PN, auth...), anyhow Parse server is promising ! I think I will have a try...

[gadlim]

@Charby said:

@gadlim regarding the user passwords, If I am correct, there are 2 different methods, one can either base64 encode username:password to be passed as header (with "Basic " as a prefix) or

I'm refering to the way the password is stored in the DB, not how it's sent to the server. In Enginio it's hidden (and probably encrypted), in Parse it's encrypted, etc. For Cloudant you have to encrypt yourself in the client or in an "update function" you're setting on the server.

I don't really understand the 2-tiers issue as you can directly use Cloudant i.o Cloudant through BlueMix, what would be your concern in this case ?

Nothing in particular, except passwords, but there's a feeling you get from the sample apps + the opinion from others that used it that you're expected to write some server code for "serious" applications.

I have spend the last days playing with BlueMix (as I need to set up Push Notification) but regarding Cloudant I came to same conclusions that this lack of collection principle might be an issue for porting enginio apps...Firebase seems to be a much better candidate in this field (and Firebase has a powerfull mecanism to notify asynchronously when new data comes in - in replacement of enginion web socket - and I haven't found something similar with Cloudant...that would be another issue when polling is not an option).

Maybe PouchDB can manage async data updates through the offline / online mechanism, but I haven't explored it.

I am very interested in the Parse Server hosting solution...I thought Parse was a no go as they are ramping down the services this year...do FB plans to release Parse to opensource (or did they already do ?). BTW, do you know what are their reasons for stopping the service ?
-Edit - replying to myself ;-) - Parse.com did release to opensource the datastore which is great - but the not the complete Parse solution (social login, PN, auth...), anyhow Parse server is promising ! I think I will have a try...

It's too early to know how the OSS Parse project will evolve, but it starts with a good momentum (around 600 000 apps), so it think it should carry on. For now, missing services are provided by the hosters, but for instance Push notifications have already been added.

What's interesting about Bluemix is that they have everything. But that's also a problem if you don't have a guide, because you're quickly lost in a sea of various tools and services. See for instance this , and that's just one single service.

[Charby]

Better late than never, I finally published a first draft of my work to design a Baas plugin.
The project can be found here : https://github.com/a-team-fr/QtQML-BaaS
It is really a Work In Progress stuff but things are slowly getting up...

For now, it is only supporting Parse Server, I used to start working on Firebase then Bluemix but I stopped and finally even dropped the code for now. I find Parse to be a much better candidate and I prefer first reach an operative state with Parse server only and then complete the plugin with others cloud services.

So far, the BaaS element can only manage users (told you it was an early phase!) and the BaaSModel can be used to get data and work as usual with a ListView for instance...I have implemented some of the feature for query but haven't tested yet.
The best (I think) is to build the whole project and see the sample project to see how to add new feature.
All comments are welcome ! I will try to improve the commenting and documenting...

I have an issue when deploying the plugin, the qmldir file is not copied to the plugin location - will investigate this later.

[gadlim]

@Charby thanks !

I think you're right, and that Parse Server is a good starting point. It may be even more than a starting point because it's evolving to be more modular and allow to plug many services, including other DBs.

I've (mostly) finished porting my app, it's working nicely. I had to patch the Parse Server code for a feature existing in Engin.io but missing in Parse (atomic updates of subdocuments), it wasn't that hard in spite of my lack of Node.js knowledge. I was pleasantly suprised by the size of the code (it's rather small, I was expecting a huge pile of exotic JS).
I've made a pull request for my patch, let's see how the discussion with the maintainers goes.

About your QML plugin, did you consider just forking/patching the Enginio C++/QML SDK instead ? If not, why ?

[Charby]

@gadlim I felt the same with Parse server, the project is rather small, simple and well written. Furthermore the project team seems very productive and I bet the project will become very popular.
I didn't fork Enginio for a couple of reasons :

• I looked at the code and found it rather difficult to master - I still haven't understand the private class principle and I haven't found a design documentation. But maybe I should have spent more time to study and hopefully understand it...
• I think forking the project would have been more difficult in the long term to main backward compatibility with existing API.
• even if my project is not a fork from enginio, it is inspired of some enginio design principles - for instance I liked the enginio model, but rewriting a similar model was not a complex task (and it was interesting from the learning point of view)
• I wanted the plugin to be as much as possible backend agnostic, that the reason why the main class is pure virtual and will be refined to ease integration of additional backend services.

[gadlim]

@Charby said:

I didn't fork Enginio for a couple of reasons :

• I looked at the code and found it rather difficult to master - I still haven't understand the private class principle and I haven't found a design documentation.

Ditto, I don't fully understand it either (the websocket stuff in particular). The private classes are mainly for binary compatibility that Qt has to maintain for all the Qt5 line, it's much simpler without that burden.