Web development & API design

Deployment

• Make your app available to the world!
   
• Pretty easy these days
   
• … and also free (Heroku, Modulus, now.sh, …)

Alternatives

• Self-hosted
   
• "Cloud"
  • IaaS
    • Google Cloud Engine
    • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    • Microsoft Azure
  • PaaS
    • Heroku
    • AWS
       
• Whatever "serverless" or "function as a service" means

Deploy to Heroku!

Heroku config

• Process types
  • What type of application
  • Which command to run to start
     
• Heroku detects Node.js
• Dependencies are auto-installed

web: node server.js

./Procfile

How to deploy?

• Heroku git server

• Your machine

• Heroku cluster

• Heroku config parser

How to deploy?

1. (Install heroku toolbelt)
    
2. git init
3. git add --all
4. git commit -m "Initial commit"
5. heroku create
6. git push heroku master

https://github.com/theneva/ready-for-takeoff-heroku/tree/ab914ef3cc40d7cd2451ec41c841daf433ac3ad4

Connect to a DB

• Can't use local DB for hosted app (duh)
   
• mLab is cool (and free)

https://github.com/theneva/ready-for-takeoff-heroku/commit/7bd28b270621957775b12d27082c3f851b38a09e

Some config vars

• PORT
   
• DB_URL
• DB_PASSWORD

• Abstracts your executable
   
• Prepackages all dependencies
  • Node, node_modules/, …
     
• Run anything with docker run <image>
  ​
• Basically the new way to deploy
   
• Kubernetes/AWS/Azure/Heroku/…
   
• Easier local runtime

Dockerfile

FROM node:8-alpine

COPY server.js .
COPY package.json .
COPY yarn.lock .

RUN yarn

CMD ["node", "server.js"]

• How to build your image
  • Steal FROM someone
  • COPY files
  • RUN commands
     
• How to run it
  • CMD: Execute your app

https://github.com/theneva/ready-for-takeoff-heroku/commit/cc626c7120b299f8d9dc874f81ec344db50b37cf

Deploy with Docker

Publish to npm!

or:

Become part of the problem! It's easy and free!

Things to think about before publish

• Has this been solved before?
• Can I contribute this to an existing project?
• Will this be useful to anyone else (or me in another project)?
• Does the code contain
  • tokens/passwords
  • business critical data
• Will I bother to maintain this?
• Code quality assurance (QA)?
  • Unit tests (Jest)
  • Coverage (thanks, Jest)
  • Linting (ESLint)

package.json

• Fields matter!
  • name (unique)
  • version (use semver)
  • licence (don't be React)
     
• Dependencies
  • It won't work without them!
  • devDependencies aren't installed
     
• README.md is displayed on npm

{
  "name": "two-string",
  "version": "1.0.2",
  "description": "An incredibly useful twoString utility.",
  "keywords": [
    "two",
    "string",
    "twoString"
  ],
  "homepage": "https://github.com/theneva/two-string",
  "bugs": "https://github.com/theneva/two-string/issues",
  "license": "CC0-1.0",
  "author": "Martin Lehmann <martin@lehmann.tech> (https://github.com/theneva)",
  "main": "src/index.js",
  "repository": {
    "type": "git",
    "url": "https://github.com/theneva/two-string"
  },
  "dependencies": {},
}

./package.json

https://www.npmjs.com/package/two-string

package.json

• "main": "path"
  • Exports from <path> are returned from
    require('two-string')
     
  • npm init assumes index.js

{
  "name": "two-string",
  "version": "1.0.2",
  "description": "An incredibly useful twoString utility.",
  "main": "src/index.js",
}

./package.json

https://www.npmjs.com/package/two-string

Test your package in another project

• In package dir: yarn link
• In other project: yarn link <package>

Content? Publish!

• yarn login
• yarn publish