parse-dashboard w/ docker-compose: unable to connect to server

I've configured a little cluster using docker-compose, consisting of parse-server, mongo and parse-dashboard:

  version: "3"
  services:
  myappdb:
    image: mongo
    ports:
      - 27017:27017
  myapp-parse-server:
    image: parseplatform/parse-server
    environment:
      - PARSE_SERVER_MASTER_KEY=xxxx
      - PARSE_SERVER_APPLICATION_ID=myapp
      - VERBOSE=0
      - PARSE_SERVER_DATABASE_URI=mongodb://myappdb:27017/dev
      - PARSE_SERVER_URL=http://myapp-parse-server:1337/parse
    depends_on:
      - myappdb
    ports:
      - 5000:1337
  parse-dashboard:
    image: parseplatform/parse-dashboard
    ports:
      - 5001:4040
    environment:
      - PARSE_DASHBOARD_ALLOW_INSECURE_HTTP=1
      - PARSE_DASHBOARD_SERVER_URL=http://myapp-parse-server:1337/parse
      - PARSE_DASHBOARD_APP_ID=myapp
      - PARSE_DASHBOARD_MASTER_KEY=xxxx
      - PARSE_DASHBOARD_USER_ID=admin
      - PARSE_DASHBOARD_USER_PASSWORD=xxxx

Try as I might, however, I cannot get the deployed parse-dashboard to connect to the myapp-parse-server. After I log in to the dashboard using my browser (at localhost:5001), the dashboard app informs me that it is 'unable to connect to server'.

I've tried pinging the host 'myapp-parse-server' from the parse-dashboard container, and it can see the container just fine. Similarly, it can see the endpoint http://myapp-parse-server:1337/parse; wget returns the expected 403.

If I use a copy of parse-dashboard running on my host machine, it works just fine against http://localhost:5000/parse. So the forwarded port from my host to the parse-server works.

I've also tried configuring dashboard using parse-dashboard-config.json mounted into the container. Yields exactly the same result.

I'm at a loss as to what I'm doing wrong here. Can anybody shed some light on this?

It looks like you have some issues with your docker-compose file:

1. PARSE_SERVER_URL is pointing to myapp-parse-server and it should point to http://localhost:1337/parse instead (unless you modified your hosts file on the container somehow but I don't see it)

2. Your myapp-parse-server should link to your database using links

here is an example of a docker-compose file from one blog that I wrote on how to deploy parse-server to google container enginee

version: "2"
services:
# Node.js parse-server application image
  app:
    build: ./app
    command: npm start -- /parse-server/config/config.json
    container_name: my-parse-app
    volumes:
    - ./app:/parse-server/
    - /parse-server/node_modules
    ports:
    - "1337:1337"
    links:
    - mongo
# MongoDB image 

  mongo:
    image: mongo
    container_name: mongo-database
    ports:
    - "27017:27017"
    volumes_from:
    - mongodata
# MongoDB image volume for persistence
  mongodata:
    image: mongo
    volumes:
    - ./data/db:/data/db
    command:
    - --break-mongo

You can see from the example above that I use links and also create and attach volume for the database disk.

Also, I personally think that it's better to run parse-server with config file in order to decouple all configurations so my configuration file looks like the following (in my docker compose you can see that I'm running parse server with config file and not with env variables)

{
"databaseURI": "mongodb://localhost:27017/my-db",
"appId": "myAppId",
"masterKey": "myMasterKey",
"serverURL": "http://localhost:1337/parse",
"cloud": "./cloud/main.js",
"mountPath": "/parse",
"port": 1337
}

Finally, In my parse-dashboard image I also use config file and simply create it as volume and replace the default config file with my own. Because this step was not covered in my blogs your final docker-compose file should look like the following:

version: "2"
services:
# Node.js parse-server application image
  app:
    build: ./app
    command: npm start -- /parse-server/config/config.json
    container_name: my-parse-app
    volumes:
    - ./app:/parse-server/
    - /parse-server/node_modules
    ports:
    - "1337:1337"
    links:
    - mongo
# MongoDB image 

  mongo:
    image: mongo
    container_name: mongo-database
    ports:
    - "27017:27017"
    volumes_from:
    - mongodata
# MongoDB image volume for persistence
  mongodata:
    image: mongo
    volumes:
    - ./data/db:/data/db
    command:
    - --break-mongo
    
  dashboard:
    image: parseplatform/parse-dashboard:1.1.0
    volumes:
      - ./dashboard/dashboard-config.json:/src/Parse-Dashboard/parse-dashboard-config.json   
    environment:
      PORT: 4040
      PARSE_DASHBOARD_ALLOW_INSECURE_HTTP: 1
      ALLOW_INSECURE_HTTP: 1
      MOUNT_PATH: "/parse"

And the parse-dashboard.json (the config file) should be:

{ "apps": [ { "serverURL": "http://localhost:3000/parse", "appId": "myMasterKey", "masterKey": "myMasterKey", "appName": "My App" }
], "users": [ { "user": "myuser", "pass": "mypassword" } ], "useEncryptedPasswords": false }

I know that it's a little bit long so I really encourage you to read the series of blogs.

Hope it will help you.