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    Para

    Open Source

    The open-source backend server for busy developers

    Para preview

    Para is a scalable, multitenant backend server/framework for object persistence and retrieval. It helps you build and prototype applications faster by taking care of backend operations. It can be a part of your JVM-based application or it can be deployed as standalone, multitenant API server with multiple applications and clients connecting to it.

    The name “pára” means “steam” in Bulgarian. And just like steam is used to power stuff, you can use Para to power your mobile or web application backend.

    See how Para compares to other open source backend frameworks.

    Features

    • RESTful JSON API secured with Amazon’s Signature V4 algorithm
    • Database-agnostic, designed for scalable data stores (DynamoDB, Cassandra, MongoDB, etc.)
    • Full-text search (Lucene, Elasticsearch)
    • Distributed and local object cache (Hazelcast, Caffeine)
    • Multitenancy - each app has its own table, index and cache
    • Webhooks with signed payloads
    • Flexible security based on Spring Security (LDAP, SAML, social login, CSRF protection, etc.)
    • Stateless client authentication with JSON Web Tokens (JWT)
    • Simple but effective resource permissions for client access control
    • Robust constraint validation mechanism based on JSR-303 and Hibernate Validator
    • Per-object control of persistence, index and cache operations
    • Support for optimistic locking and transactions (implemented by each DAO natively)
    • Advanced serialization and deserialization capabilities (Jackson)
    • Full metrics for monitoring and diagnostics (Dropwizard)
    • Modular design powered by Google Guice and support for plugins
    • I18n utilities for translating language packs and working with currencies
    • Standalone executable JAR with embedded Jetty
    • Para Web Console - admin user interface

    Architecture

    +----------------------------------------------------------+
|                  ____  ___ _ ____ ___ _                  |
|                 / __ \/ __` / ___/ __` /                 |
|                / /_/ / /_/ / /  / /_/ /                  |
|               / .___/\__,_/_/   \__,_/     +-------------+
|              /_/                           | Persistence |
+-------------------+  +-----------------+   +-------------+
|      REST API     |  |     Search      |---|    Cache    |
+---------+---------+--+--------+--------+---+------+------+
          |                     |                   |
+---------+---------+  +--------+--------+   +------+------+
|  Signed Requests  |  |  Search Index   |   |  Data Store |
|  and JWT Tokens   |  |      (Any)      |   |    (Any)    |
+----+---------^----+  +-----------------+   +-------------+
     |         |
+----v---------+-------------------------------------------+
| Clients: JavaScript, PHP, Java, C#, Android, iOS, et al. |
+----------------------------------------------------------+

    Hosting

    We offer hosting and premium support at paraio.com where you can try Para online with a free developer account. Browse and manage your users and objects, do backups and edit permissions with a few clicks in the web console. By upgrading to a premium account you will be able to scale you projects up and down in seconds and manage multiple apps.

    Quick Start

    1. Download the latest executable JAR
    2. Create a configuration file application.conf file in the same directory as the JAR package.
    3. Start Para with java -jar -Dconfig.file=./application.conf para-*.jar
    4. Install Para CLI with npm install -g para-cli
    5. Create a new dedicated app for your project and save the access keys:
    # run setup and set endpoint to either 'http://localhost:8080' or 'https://paraio.com'
# the keys for the root app are inside application.conf
$ para-cli setup
$ para-cli new-app "myapp" --name "My App"

    Alternatively, you can use the Para Web Console to manage data, or integrate Para directly into your project with one of the API clients below.

    Docker

    Tagged Docker images for Para are located at erudikaltd/para on Docker Hub. It’s highly recommended that you pull only release images like :1.51.0 or :latest_stable because the :latest tag can be broken or unstable. First, create an application.conf file and a data folder and start the Para container:

    $ touch application.conf && mkdir data
$ docker run -ti -p 8080:8080 --rm -v $(pwd)/data:/para/data \
  -v $(pwd)/application.conf:/para/application.conf \
  -e JAVA_OPTS="-Dconfig.file=/para/application.conf" erudikaltd/para:latest_stable

    Documentation

    Read the full documentation here