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Deploying your web server (on Render)

This is a Makers Vine. Vines are designed to gradually build up sophisticated skills. They contain a mixture of text and video, and may contain some challenge exercises without proposed solutions. Read more about how to use Makers Vines.

Learn to deploy an application using Render.

Intro

It is now time to deploy your application so it runs remotely. Remember that this is how web server programs work in real-world situations: they run on a remote machine, and clients access it through the network, using HTTP requests and responses.

In this section, you will use Render, which is a Cloud service allowing us to deploy programs without too much configuration and work. It has a limited free tier you can use for simple projects.

First, you'll need to create an account. Then follow the steps below.

Project setup

This guidance assumes you have a small Ruby + Sinatra web application you want to deploy.

Your code will need to be deployed to a public github repository.

First, run the following in your project directory to make sure all the required gems are installed, and the code is pushed to Github.

# Make sure the different gems are listed in the Gemfile
$ bundle add sinatra sinatra-contrib webrick rackup
$ bundle install

# This command will allow Render to run the `bundle` commands
$ bundle lock --add-platform x86_64-linux

# Make sure it's all committed and pushed to the Github repo
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Setup for deploy"
$ git push -u origin main

Setting up the server on Render

If your web application connects to a PostgreSQL database, follow this section first to setup the Database before setting up the web server.

  1. On the dashboard, select "New Web Service"
  2. You'll need to connect your Github repository containing your project. Connect your Github account and select the project repository.
  3. Give a name to the web service (such as my-web-app), and leave all the default values. For the "Start Command", type in rackup, so Render knows it needs to run this command to run the server.
  4. Select the "Free" plan and click the button "Create Web Service".
  5. Wait for Render to retrieve the project's code and run the server. It should then be accessible in your browser at the URL given on the project page.

You might have to wait a bit (sometimes up to an hour) before the web application is accessible via that URL.

Using a PostgreSQL database on Render

Step 1 - Creating the database on Render

  1. On the dashboard, select "New PostgreSQL"
  2. On the setting up page, choose a name for the resource (such as my-app-database) and leave all the other fields empty. Render will generate some unique PostgreSQL database and user names for us.
  3. Wait a few minutes for the database to be ready, then copy the "Internal Database URL" from the Connections panel on the page.

Step 2 - Setting up the environment variable

  1. Go back to your Web service on Render, and select "Environment" in the sidebar menu.
  2. Add an environment variable with key DATABASE_URL and copy the value of the Internal Database URL copied in the previous section.
  3. Save changes.

Step 3 - Seeding the database

The database on Render needs to be seeded with the correct tables.

To connect to the database using psql, go on the database page on Render and click the "Connect" button in the top-right corner of the page. Copy the PSQL Command, and paste it directly into your terminal. It should look like this:

PGPASSWORD=********* psql -h dpg-cd7taj9gp3jgp4i9k55g-a.oregon-postgres.render.com -U my_app_database_user my_app_database

Run the command and psql should then connect to the remote database. Once you're in the REPL, you can load the SQL structure and seeds of your tables by copy pasting the SQL code in there.

Step 4 - Update the code

Modify the DatabaseConnection class so it uses the environment variable set in the previous section, if it is present, and connects to the right database.

# file: lib/database_connection.rb

def self.connect
  # If the environment variable (set by Render)
  # is present, use this to open the connection.
  if ENV['DATABASE_URL'] != nil
    @connection = PG.connect(ENV['DATABASE_URL'])
    return
  end

  if ENV['ENV'] == 'test'
    database_name = 'music_library_test'
  else
    database_name = 'music_library'
  end
  @connection = PG.connect({ host: '127.0.0.1', dbname: database_name })
end

You can now commit your changes to the file, push it to Github, and redeploy the web service on Render.

Exercise

Deploy your previous challenge project to a new Render app.

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