Mobile/Web Application Backend

Question

I am currently working on a project where I need a backend for a mobile (iOS) and web application. For another project that I worked on a while ago, I used Parse.com as the backend since I did not have to deploy the application to the general public.

Since the application I want to launch may have a sudden burst of requests I wanted to use another service. Therefore, I am currently working on a PHP/MySQL backend that receives http requests and returns JSON encoded data.

Would this be an ideal setup for a scalable backend or is there any other service such as www.backendless.com that would enable me to have the same functionality without having to code everything myself?

I'm not an experienced backend developer and I am currently using most of my time on the backend and not working on the front-end.

Thanks.

Answer 1

PHP is a good language to start with and it's good enough (though not the best), first you need to choose a framework to help you getting what you want faster & more optimized and I suggest the Phalcon PHP framework, this one use some components from the C language which makes it faster than the others

After getting good in PHP please read more about the Restful APIs, because that's how you will handle the data for a mobile application.

And if you want a service for the backend like Parse I suggest Firebase for you, hope my answer helped. Good luck with your app.

Answer 2

I have been using Cakephp for my last 5 projects, creating backends to use as cms and as rest API (in my case I used JSON as response, but there are other formats). [http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/development/rest.html]

It is very easy to create your models, controllers and get started with your API. It also provides a lot of authentication methods, etc.

Parse is shutting down so it is not an option.

Answer 3

Everyone knows Parse is going to be unavailable so next ready option for BaaS is Firebase but keep in mind there are many things that are not Supported by Firebase unlike Parse, for example image storing, push notifications ... Another option is AWS Mobile Hub