Heroku is a Cloud Application Platform that will allow you to publish your apps to the web. We'll be primarily using Heroku in this class but it's important to note that there are many other companies out there that offer similar services.
To use heroku, you will need to sign up for an account on heroku.com.
Heroku pricing with start at $5/month for an Eco Dyno Plan.
This covers 1,000 "compute hours". Heroku servers ("dynos") start up on-the-fly when a request is made to your server. They stay running for 30 minutes, and then shut down if there are no further requests.
Given that your servers will only be accessed occasionally, you should be able to host as many apps as you need under the Eco Dyno plan.
Databases are not included with this plan. To solve this problem we will need a second provider to host the database part of our application. Here are two options that we recommend:
See:
Heroku requires Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) for all accounts. MFA is a security measure that uses your phone (or other device) to prove that you are who you say you are. A common example is when apps send you a text message with a one-time code to login.
During the sign-up process on heroku.com you will be asked to setup MFA (if not, go to Account Settings > Setup MFA):
- Select Salesforce Authenticator as your verification method.
- Install the Salesforce Authenticator app on your phone
- Open the phone app, and select Add an Account
- The app will display a two word phrase. Type this phase into the heroku web site when prompted.
- Log out of heroku and log back in, to confirm that MFA is setup properly.
Your heroku account is now configured to use MFA. Whenever you login to heroku, you will receive a push notification asking you to approve the login.
These things tend to change periodically. Heroku's own documentation may help if the above isn't working as expected. https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/multi-factor-authentication
Heroku offers a CLI (command line) tool. This allows you to deploy and manage your project from the terminal.
npm install -g heroku
Note: There are other ways to install, but
npmis the most simple. As of Nov 2022,npmis the only option for M1 computers.
You will need to login from your terminal to use to use the heroku CLI command:
heroku login
This will open a web site in your browser to complete the login process.
You will need a create a new heroku project for every app you want to deploy.
Note that your project must be setup as a git repository for these commands to work.
cdinto your project directory, if needed- Run
heroku create
- INSTRUCTORS NEED TO USE:
heroku create --team fse-instructors
- Login in if prompted -- it might ask to open a browser
- Type
git remote -vto ensure it added successfully. You should see a remote calledheroku
Heroku works by creating a new git remote. Just like we can push our repo to Github (origin), we will now be able to push our repo to heroku:
git push heroku main
To open your app in a browser:
heroku open
Some things about your app will be different when running on heroku, vs on your own computer. We use environment variables, which can be set differently on different computers.
Environment variables are just like JS variables, but they're live on your entire computer, not in your JS code. Your javascript code can access these variables using process.env.SOME_ENV_VAR.
Example:
// script.js
console.log('My name is: ', process.env.MY_NAME)# Set an environment variable in your terminal
$ export MY_NAME=Jonas
# Run your JS script
$ node ./script.js
> "My name is Jonas"On Heroku, our apps will run on a different port every time we deploy. Heroku will set a PORT environment variable to tell us which port we need to listen on.
Your server.js file should have a line of code that looks something like this:
// In server.js
// Use the `PORT` env var, if it's set
// otherwise, default to port 5000
const PORT = process.env.PORT || 5000;
// ...
app.listen(PORT, /* ... */);This will allow heroku to tell your app which port to listen on.
If you are using a database, you will need to configure your database URL as an environment variable.
See the deployment instructions for the database provider you chose:
You may need to setup other environment variable. For example, API keys and other secrets must be kept as environment variables, so they are not pushed to Github.
To set environment variables in heroku, run:
heroku config:set MY_SUPER_SECRET=some-secret-value
Replace
MY_SUPER_SECRETandsome-secret-valuewith the actual variable name and value!
In your app, you can access this value using process.env:
const someSecret = process.env.MY_SUPER_SECRET;See docs for for your database provider:
To deploy new code changes to heroku, use git:
- Use
git addandgit committo commit your code (as usual) - Use
git push origin mainto push your code to Github (as usual) - Use
git push heroku mainto deploy your code to heroku (new!) - Run
heroku opento open your app in a web browser.
Note: You'll need to commit and push each time you make a change that you want to deploy to Heroku. Keep in mind you CAN NOT pull from Heroku. This is not a replacement for GitHub!
See Heroku Docs for more details on deploying with git.
Note: It is best to fully test your code locally before deploying to Heroku. Bugs are much harder to troubleshoot on a live website
BONUS: You can setup Github Integration on Heroku to automatically deploy whenever you push code to Github.
Your app is running on heroku's servers, not on your computer. To see the logs from your deployed app, you will need to ask Heroku to send them to you:
heroku logs --tail
This will "follow" or "tail" logs, so you see new logs as they are written. Press Ctrl-C to stop following logs.
heroku logs --tail- Display error logs (Ctrl-Cto exit)heroku config- Show basic app infoheroku restart- Sometimes it helps to turn things off an on againheroku open- Opens the website for you project in the browserheroku config:set MY_SUPER_SECRET=some-secret-value- Set an environment variable