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Server-Side Swift with Vapor

Third Edition - Early Acess 1 · iOS 13 · Swift 5.2 - Vapor 4 Framework · Xcode 11.4

Before You Begin

Section 0: 3 chapters
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Section I: Creating a Simple Web API

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31. Deploying with Heroku
Written by Logan Wright

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Note: This update is an early-access release. This chapter has not yet been updated to Vapor 4.

Heroku is a popular hosting solution that simplifies deployment of web and cloud applications. It supports a number of popular languages and database options. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to deploy a Vapor web app with a Postgres database on Heroku.

Setting up Heroku

If you don’t already have an Heroku account, sign up for one now. Heroku offers free options and setting up an account is painless. Simply visit https://signup.heroku.com/ and follow the instructions to create an account.

Installing CLI

Now that you have your Heroku account, install the Heroku CLI tool. The easiest way to install on macOS is through Homebrew. In Terminal, enter:

brew install heroku/brew/heroku

Logging in

With the Heroku CLI installed, you need to log in to your account. In Terminal, enter:

heroku login
heroku auth:whoami

Create an application

Visit heroku.com in your browser to create a new application. Heroku.com should redirect you to dashboard.heroku.com. If it doesn’t, make sure you’re logged in and try again. Once at the dashboard, in the upper right hand corner, there’s a button that says New. Click it and select Create new app.

Enter application name

At the next screen, choose the deployment region and a unique app name. If you don’t want to choose your app’s name, leave the field blank and Heroku automatically generates a unique slug to identify the application for you. Whether you create a name, or Heroku assigns you one, make note of it; you’ll use it later when configuring your app.

Add PostgreSQL database

After creating your application, Heroku redirects you to your application’s page. Near the top, under your application’s name, there is a row of tabs. Select Resources.

Setting up your Vapor app locally

Your application is now setup with Heroku; the next step is to configure the Vapor app locally. Download and open the project associated with this chapter. If you’ve been following along with the book, it should look like the TIL project you’ve been working on. You’re free to use your own project instead.

Git

Heroku uses Git to deploy your app, so you’ll need to put your project into a Git repository, if it isn’t already.

git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree

Initialize Git

If you need to add Git to your project, enter the following command in Terminal:

git init

Branch

Heroku deploys the master branch. Make sure you are on this branch and have merged any changes you wish to deploy.

git branch
* master
  commander
  other-branches
git checkout master

Commit changes

Make sure all changes are in your master branch and committed. You can verify by entering the following command. If you see any output, it means you have uncommitted changes.

git status --porcelain
git add .
git commit -m "a description of the changes I made"

Connect with Heroku

Heroku needs to configure another remote on your Git repository. Enter the following command in Terminal, substituting your app’s Heroku name:

$ heroku git:remote -a your-apps-name-here

Set Stack

As of 13 September 2018, Heroku’s default stack is Heroku 18, which will cause problems in building Swift and Vapor. This means you’ll need to ensure your app is built using the Heroku 16 infrastructure. To do this, enter the following command:

heroku stack:set heroku-16 -a your-apps-name-here

Set Buildpack

Heroku uses something called a Buildpack to provide the recipe for building your app when you deploy it. The Vapor Community currently provides a Buildpack designed for Vapor apps. To set the Buildpack for your application, enter the following in Terminal:

heroku buildpacks:set https://github.com/vapor-community/heroku-buildpack

Swift version file

Now that your Buildpack is set, Heroku needs a couple of configuration files. The first of these is .swift-version. This is used by the Buildpack to determine which version of Swift to install for the project. Enter the following command in Terminal:

echo "4.2.2" > .swift-version

Procfile

Once the app is built on Heroku, Heroku needs to know what type of process to run and how to run it. To determine this, it utilizes a special file named Procfile. Enter the following command to create your Procfile:

echo "web: Run serve --env production" \
  "--hostname 0.0.0.0 --port \$PORT" > Procfile

Commit changes

As mentioned earlier, Heroku uses Git and the master branch to deploy applications. Since you configured Git earlier, you’ve added two files: Procfile and .swift-version.

git add .
git commit -m "adding heroku build files"

Configure the database

There’s one more thing to do before you deploy your app: You must configure the database within your app. Start by listing the configuration variables for your app.

heroku config
=== today-i-learned-vapor Config Vars
DATABASE_URL: postgres://cybntsgadydqzm:2d9dc7f6d964f4750da1518ad71hag2ba729cd4527d4a18c70e024b11cfa8f4b@ec2-54-221-192-231.compute-1.amazonaws.com:5432/dfr89mvoo550b4
postgres://cybntsgadydqzm:2d9dc7f6d964f4750da1518ad71hag2ba729cd4527d4a18c70e024b11cfa8f4b@ec2-54-221-192-231.compute-1.amazonaws.com:5432/dfr89mvoo550b4
let hostname = 
  Environment.get("DATABASE_HOSTNAME") ?? "localhost"
let databaseName: String
let databasePort: Int
if env == .testing {
  databaseName = "vapor-test"
  if let testPort = Environment.get("DATABASE_PORT") {
    databasePort = Int(testPort) ?? 5433
  } else {
    databasePort = 5433
  }
} else {
  databaseName = "vapor"
  databasePort = 5432
}

let databaseConfig = PostgreSQLDatabaseConfig(
  hostname: hostname,
  port: databasePort,
  username: "vapor",
  database: databaseName,
  password: "password")
let databaseConfig: PostgreSQLDatabaseConfig
if let url = Environment.get("DATABASE_URL") {
  databaseConfig = PostgreSQLDatabaseConfig(url: url)!
} else {
  let hostname = 
    Environment.get("DATABASE_HOSTNAME") ?? "localhost"
  let databaseName: String
  let databasePort: Int
  if env == .testing {
    databaseName = "vapor-test"
    if let testPort = Environment.get("DATABASE_PORT") {
      databasePort = Int(testPort) ?? 5433
    } else {
      databasePort = 5433
    }
  } else {
    databaseName = "vapor"
    databasePort = 5432
  }
    
  databaseConfig = PostgreSQLDatabaseConfig(
    hostname: hostname,
    port: databasePort,
    username: "vapor",
    database: databaseName,
    password: "password")
}
git add .
git commit -m "configured heroku database"

Configure Google environment variables

If you completed Chapter 22, “Google Authentication”, and are using that as your project here, you must configure the same Google environment variables you used there.

heroku config:set \
  GOOGLE_CALLBACK_URL=https://<YOUR_HEROKU_URL>/oauth/google

heroku config:set GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=<YOUR_CLIENT_ID>

heroku config:set GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=<YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET>

Deploying to Heroku

You’re now ready to deploy your app to Heroku. Push your master branch to your Heroku remote and wait for everything to build. This can take a while, particularly on a large application.

git push heroku master
heroku ps:scale web=1
heroku open

Reverting your database

If you followed the chapters in the first three sections, you encountered the need to revert the database in Docker. It’s a simple matter to run a database revert or migration on Heroku, as well.

heroku run Run -- revert --yes --env production
heroku run Run -- revert --all --yes --env production
heroku run Run -- migrate --env production

Where to go from here?

In this chapter, you learned how to set up the app in the Heroku dashboard, configure your Git repository, add the necessary configuration files to your project, and deploy your app. Explore your dashboard and the Heroku Help to learn even more options!

Have a technical question? Want to report a bug? You can ask questions and report bugs to the book authors in our official book forum here.
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