# What is Heroku

Heroku is a popular all in one hosting solution, you can find more at [heroku.com](https://www.heroku.com)

## Signing Up

You'll need a heroku account, if you don't have one, please sign up here: [https://signup.heroku.com/](https://signup.heroku.com/)

## Installing CLI

Make sure that you've installed the heroku cli tool.

### HomeBrew

```bash
brew tap heroku/brew && brew install heroku
```

### Other Install Options

See alternative install options here: [https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli#download-and-install](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli#download-and-install).

### Logging in

Once you've installed the cli, login with the following:

```bash
heroku login
```

Verify that the correct email is logged in with:

```bash
heroku auth:whoami
```

### Create an application

Visit dashboard.heroku.com to access your account, and create a new application from the drop down in the upper right hand corner. Heroku will ask a few questions such as region and application name, just follow their prompts.

### 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.

#### Initialize Git

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

```bash
git init
```

#### Master

You should decide for one branch and stick to that for deploying to Heroku, like the **main** or **master** branch. Make sure all changes are checked into this branch before pushing.

Check your current branch with:

```bash
git branch
```

The asterisk indicates current branch.

```bash
* main
  commander
  other-branches
```

!!! note 
    If you don’t see any output and you’ve just performed `git init`. You’ll need to commit your code first then you’ll see output from the `git branch` command.

If you’re _not_ currently on the right branch, switch there by entering (for **main**):

```bash
git checkout main
```

#### Commit changes

If this command produces output, then you have uncommitted changes.

```bash
git status --porcelain
```

Commit them with the following

```bash
git add .
git commit -m "a description of the changes I made"
```

#### Connect with Heroku

Connect your app with heroku (replace with your app's name).

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

### Set Buildpack

Set the buildpack to teach heroku how to deal with vapor.

```bash
heroku buildpacks:set vapor/vapor
```

### Swift version file

The buildpack we added looks for a **.swift-version** file to know which version of swift to use. (Replace 5.8.1 with whatever version your project requires.)

```bash
echo "5.8.1" > .swift-version
```

This creates **.swift-version** with `5.8.1` as its contents.

### Procfile

Heroku uses the **Procfile** to know how to run your app, in our case it needs to look like this:

```
web: App serve --env production --hostname 0.0.0.0 --port $PORT
```

We can create this with the following terminal command

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

### Commit changes

We just added these files, but they're not committed. If we push, heroku will not find them.

Commit them with the following.

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

### Deploying to Heroku

You're ready to deploy, run this from the terminal. It may take a while to build, this is normal.

```bash
git push heroku main
```

### Scale Up

Once you've built successfully, you need to add at least one server. Prices start at $5/month for the Eco plan (see [pricing](https://www.heroku.com/pricing#containers)), make sure you have payment configured on Heroku. Then for a single web worker:

```bash
heroku ps:scale web=1
```

### Continued Deployment

Any time you want to update, just get the latest changes into main and push to heroku and it will redeploy.

## Postgres

### Add PostgreSQL database

Visit your application at dashboard.heroku.com and go to the **Add-ons** section.

From here enter `postgres` and you'll see an option for `Heroku Postgres`. Select it.

Choose the Essential 0 plan for $5/month (see [pricing](https://www.heroku.com/pricing#data-services)), and provision. Heroku will do the rest.

Once you finish, you’ll see the database appears under the **Resources** tab.

### Configure the database

We have to now tell our app how to access the database. In our app directory, let's run.

```bash
heroku config
```

This will make output somewhat like this

```none
=== today-i-learned-vapor Config Vars
DATABASE_URL: postgres://cybntsgadydqzm:2d9dc7f6d964f4750da1518ad71hag2ba729cd4527d4a18c70e024b11cfa8f4b@ec2-54-221-192-231.compute-1.amazonaws.com:5432/dfr89mvoo550b4
```

**DATABASE_URL** here will represent out postgres database. **NEVER** hard code the static url from this, heroku will rotate it and it will break your application. It is also bad practice. Instead, read the environment variable at runtime.

The Heroku Postgres addon [requires](https://devcenter.heroku.com/changelog-items/2035) all connections to be encrypted. The certificates used by the Postgres servers are internal to Heroku, therefore an **unverified** TLS connection must be set up.

The following snippet shows how to achieve both:

```swift
if let databaseURL = Environment.get("DATABASE_URL") {
    var tlsConfig: TLSConfiguration = .makeClientConfiguration()
    tlsConfig.certificateVerification = .none
    let nioSSLContext = try NIOSSLContext(configuration: tlsConfig)

    var postgresConfig = try SQLPostgresConfiguration(url: databaseURL)
    postgresConfig.coreConfiguration.tls = .require(nioSSLContext)

    app.databases.use(.postgres(configuration: postgresConfig), as: .psql)
} else {
    // ...
}
```

Don't forget to commit these changes

```bash
git add .
git commit -m "configured heroku database"
```

### Reverting your database

You can revert or run other commmands on heroku with the `run` command.

To revert your database:

```bash
heroku run App -- migrate --revert --all --yes --env production
```

To migrate:

```bash
heroku run App -- migrate --env production
```