Learn (How to Deploy a Web Application on) Heroku

Why?

You know how to create a web application, but that knowledge is only useful if you know how to show the app to people!

What?

Easily deploy your node.js web application to Heroku so you can start testing it with end-users as soon as possible!

You'll have a public URL for your app in 5 minutes which you can share with real people and get feedback/validation for your idea!

"Top 7" Key Benefits:

• Basic apps are Free!! (e.g. Demo, Hackathon or "Low Traffic" Personal "Blog" or Portfolio site)

• Quick and Easy Deployment from your development machine or GitHub! A couple of clicks or a single command is all it takes!

• Excellent knowledge base / documentation for both simple and advanced topics! (if you get stuck, ask a question we can/will help!)

• Continuous Deployment is easy from a GitHub repository using "Hooks". (see step-by-step tutorial below!)

• Great Range of "Addon Services" you can use with your app in a couple of clicks (e.g: PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, Monitoring etc.)
  and most have a "free tier" so you can get started without spending a penny! See: https://elements.heroku.com/addons

• "Industry Standard" Service Quality is really good (under the hood Heroku uses Amazon Web Services but they do all the "plumbing" so you don't have to waste time on "DevOps" until you're ready to scale, at which point just pay for a pro!)

• Cost-effective for your first 10k users (don't waste your time on "DevOps" till you have validated your App Idea with real people!)

Who?

Anyone building for the web who values their time and wants/needs a painless way to deploy, monitor and automatically scale an app!

How?

Beginner: Basic Heroku Deployment of Node.JS App in 5 Minutes

Pre-requisites:

• Computer with a Web Browser
• Internet Connection
• GitHub Account ... if you don't have one see: github.com/dwyl/github-reference#how-to-sign-up
• Heroku account ... if you don't have one, sign up now: https://signup.heroku.com (it's free! and no credit card required!)

No Experience/Knoweldge Required

• No Node.js or other knowledge required
• All web-based (no command line, we can learn that "CLI" later!)

1. Fork this repository on GitHub!

In your web browser navigate to: github.com/dwyl/learn-heroku (if you aren't already on the page)

After you have starred the repository, click the "fork" button:

You should now see something similar to this:
(with your GitHub username in place of mine)

2. Log into your Heroku Account and Create a New App

Note: if you don't already have a Heroku account set one up now!

Visit: https://dashboard.heroku.com/new and create your new app.
example:

(you will need to give your app a different name; all heroku apps are unique.)

3. Use Heroku (Web) UI to Deploy the Application

Once you create your app in Heroku you will be shown the "Deploy" screen:

Connect your Heroku app to the GitHub Repository you created (by forking) in step 1 (above).

Steps:

• Click on the "Connect to GitHub" button
• Search for the repository learn-heroku in our case
• Click on "Connect" button.

Now click "Enable Automatic Deploys" to ensure that any changes made on GitHub are automatically deployed on Heroku:

4. Test The Deployment Works by Updating a File in the Forked Repo

Back in GitHub, use the Web user interface (UI) to edit one of the files in your fork of learn-heroku.

My suggestion is update (increment) the version number in the package.json file:

Click the edit icon:

In the edit view, increment the version number:

Now scroll down to the Commit changes section of the edit view:

write a descriptive commit message and click the "Commit changes" button.

Note: we typically don't encourage people to commit directly to master but given that this is your personal fork you can do it this one time.

You should see something like this:

That will trigger the Heroku deployment of the Hello World Application!

5. Visit the Heroku App in your Web Browser

In my case the URL for my app is: https://hello-world-heroku-node.herokuapp.com

You should expect to see:

Congratulations! You just deployed your first app on Heroku!

Intermediate: Detailed Step-by-Step Instructions a "Real" App

See: elixir-phoenix-app-deployment.md

Intermediate: Environment Variables on Heroku

See: github.com/dwyl/learn-environment-variables#environment-variables-on-heroku

Intermediate: Using a Custom Domain Name on Heroku

To use a custom domain name on your heroku app, the first thing to do is to purchase your domain name. There are a number of services you can use for this (we like iwantmyname.com).

The next step is to add this domain to your heroku app. You can do this using the command line interface, or the settings dashboard on heroku.com.

Once you've added your domain, you should see a DNS target:

This is what you need to give to your DNS provider (which is most likely the site you purchased your domain from).

If your domain starts with www., you will need to add the DNS target as a CNAME record with a name of www

If your domain just consists of the domain name and the top level domain (eg. github.com instead of www.github.com; This is known as the root domain), you might be able to add it as a CNAME, but will most likely need to add it as an ANAME or an ALIAS record. In this case, either leave the name blank, or use @

Some services will not allow you to add the root domain as a CNAME, and will not have ANAME or ALIAS as an option, instead requiring you to give an IP address as the A record. This is not possible with heroku, as they use dynamic IP addresses, meaning they will change regularly and your DNS record will no longer be correct.

However, if you still want people to be able to access your site using the root domain, there are still a few things you can do.

Some services (iwantmyname.com included) have a feature where they will automatically configure DNS records for popular web services (tumblr, squarespace, heroku etc.).

Another alternative is to just add the www DNS record, and to add a redirect (it may also be known as forwarding) from your root domain to that. This does mean that the www will show in the browser address bar, but both addresses will lead to your site.

See the heroku docs or your DNS providers help page for specific instructions.

Background Reading

• https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-nodejs
• http://build-podcast.com/heroku

Frequently Asked/Ansered Questions (FAQ)

Isn't Heroku "Expensive" for the CPU/RAM You're Getting?

Heroku costs more per unit of computing resource than the equivalent infrastructure provider (e.g: AWS / DigitalOcean / GoogleCloud / Azure / etc.) but it's cheap if you factor developer's time as your biggest cost/constraint!
Setting up deployment to AWS with all the benefits/features Heroku has out-of-the-box will take hours. So unless your developer's time is free or you are the developer and want to spend a day on deployment instead of building features to solve the end-user's problem, use Heroku and focus on building the product!
See: https://github.com/dwyl/learn-heroku/issues/3