heroku_sql_personal.md

Heroku Server + PostgreSQL Hosting for Personal Projects:

Prerequisites

1. A Heroku account, with:
   • An active subscription to the Eco Dynos Plan
   • A credit card on file so that you can pay for the Heroku Postgres Add-On.
2. An install of the Heroku CLI. (CLI: Command Line Interface)
   • npm install -g heroku
3. An install of PostgreSQL's CLI Tools.
4. The ability to successfully authenticate with Heroku by typing heroku login in your Terminal.
   • This will prompt you to press a key and you'll be directed to log in through the Heroku web app.
5. The project you'd like to deploy must be a git repository. (Derp.)

Repo Setup

Before you deploy, make sure your server PORT is configured correctly as:

const PORT = process.env.PORT || 5001;

And make sure your **modules/pool.js** has some conditional code using process.env.DATABASE_URL like:

if (process.env.DATABASE_URL) {
  config = {
    // We use the DATABASE_URL from Heroku to connect to our DB
    connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
    // Heroku also requires this special `ssl` config
    ssl: { rejectUnauthorized: false },
  };
} else {
  // If we're not on heroku, configure PG to use our local database
  config = {
    host: 'localhost',
    port: 5432,
    database: 'prime_app', // CHANGE THIS LINE to match your local database name!
  };
}

Creating Your Heroku App

Run the following terminal commands from within your project folder's root directory.

1. heroku create
   • Log in in if prompted.
   • This will instantiate a Heroku app.
2. git remote -v to ensure it added successfully
   • You should see output like this. (AKA: This repo is a home on GitHub named origin and a home on Heroku named heroku.)
   • 
3. heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:essential-0
   • Note: essential-0 can be replaced with whichever plan you prefer.

Deploying Your Repo to Heroku

Run the following commands from within your project folder's root directory.

1. heroku pg:push your_database DATABASE_URL
   • Replace your_database with the actual name of your local PostgreSQL database.
   • This command effectively pushes up a copy of that database to Heroku.
   • If this doesn't work, ensure that you've installed PostgreSQL's CLI Tools and restarted your terminal!
2. git push heroku main
   • This will push your project repository up to Heroku.
3. That's deployment. If everything worked, heroku open should successfully open your app in the browser.

Managing Your Deployment

Common Commands

• heroku logs - Display the most recent Heroku-hosted server logs.
  • heroku logs --tail - Display Heroku-hosted server logs as they occur in real time.
• heroku config - Show basic app info.
• heroku restart - Sometimes it helps to turn things off an on again. 🙂
• heroku open - Opens the website for you project in the browser.

Connect Postico to your Heroku Database

If you would like to view/edit your hosted database, you can actually use Postico!

1. From your Heroku Dashboard, click your application.
2. Then, click the Resources tab.
3. In the Add-ons section, click Heroku Postgres.
4. Click the Settings tab, then click View Credentials
5. Open Postico, then click New Favorite.
6. In the new Postico favorite, update the following to match Heroku:

• Host
• Database
• User
• Port
• Password

7. Click Connect and you should have access to your database directly from Postico!