I have an app running on Heroku with a small handful of settings that I want to change from time to time, and I'd like to use Heroku config vars to store these settings so they persist durably.
I know I can modify the settings from the Heroku dashboard or the Heroku CLI, but I'd like to modify them from within the app UI.
I can't seem to figure out how to modify the app's Heroku config from within the app code. If I simply modify the dyno's environment, for example, those changes do not persist to the app's config.
You can use Heroku Platform API for this. Especially this part. There is also a ruby client
Related
Is it possible to set app.json manifest items manually? (i.e. for an app that's already built?)
In case this is an XY problem, what I am interested in is setting success_url via the heroku CLI (rather than in app.json)
Some of these items of the manifest like addons, buildpacks, env, name ... can be changed for apps that's already built using Heroku CLI or Heroku Platform API.
Looking at the Heroku CLI Commands and Heroku Platform API, there is no way to change success_url after the app is built even if you update app.json manually and rebuild the app because the app.json is only used to orchestrate the first time setup of the application.
I have successfully deployed my app on Heroku, added add-ons, updated env var via the control-panel settings, etc. I am now looking at creating an app.json after the fact. Is it possible to query Heroku in some way to have an app.json generated from the hosted application that I've created?
I found the answer via another SO post: Heroku provides an App.json-creation tool. Simply log into Heroku, navigate to your app and add "/app-json" to the end.
For example:
https://dashboard.heroku.com/apps/your-app-name/app-json
Heroku provides its own database name and other credentials, but my local database name is different.How can I change the database name according to the database credentials provided by heroku during production?
Use a package like dotenv. dotenv and variants of it likely exist for whatever language you're using.
Basically, you want to use environment variables instead of hard coding values into your code. So, instead of writing something like this:
my_database_connect('my_username', 'abc123')
You'd write:
my_database_connect(process.env.DB_USERNAME, process.env.DB_PASSWORD)
Heroku will already have these environment variables set on the "config" tab of your app. Then for local development, you'll create a file called .env and have this text in it:
DB_USERNAME=my_username
DB_PASSWORD=abc123
Don't commit .env to your git repository – it should only live on your machine where you develop. Now your code will run locally as well as on Heroku, and connect to the proper database depending on the environment it's running in.
Here's an article that explains this more thoroughly for node.js, although this is basically the best practice for general development: https://medium.com/#rafaelvidaurre/managing-environment-variables-in-node-js-2cb45a55195f
First I created an application name on Heroku. Then I deployed my app to heroku by connecting to github.
Heroku provides the database credentials after we deploy our applications. Then I redeployed the app through github by changing the configuration in application.properties file as follows:
#localhost configuration
SPRING_DATASOURCE_DRIVER_CLASS_NAME=org.postgresql.Driver
SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL=jdbc:postgresql://localhost/transactions?useSSL=false
SPRING_DATASOURCE_USER=postgres
SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD=some_pass
#server database configuration
SPRING_DATASOURCE_DRIVER_CLASS_NAME=org.postgresql.Driver
SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL=jdbc:postgresql://ec2-23-23-247-222.compute-1.amazonaws.com/d6kk9c4s7onnu?useSSL=false
SPRING_DATASOURCE_USER=rimjvlxrdswwou
SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD=dd903753bc0adffb96ce541b1d55fb043472e32e28031ddc334175066aa42f69
Then you have to edit the config vars according to your application.properties files as shown in the figure below
config_var.png
if I exclude the file with API KEY and push to gitHub and then to Heroku the app doesn't work because the app can't get access to the api key.
What is the workaround? I'm quite a novice so comments or info with human readable language would be highly appreciated. Thanks!
You need to store the API key as an environment variable.
In heroku, go to your app, then settings and click on "Reveal Config Vars".
In there you can store your API key for your deployed server to use. This is also where you will store DB urls too, etc.
Heroku has interface for setting up environment variables.
So use environment variable locally (from environment or e.g. .env file) and remotely.
Also read on 12-factor-app
Usually this kind of stuff should be kept in Heroku config variables. I find heroku command line more convenience. You can download it here. Then, you can use this command to setup the new Heroku configVar at will.
heroku config:set API_KEY=1234567890 --app your_app_name
To see all configs,
heroku config --app your_app_name
Then, based on the language developed, you can access this configVar from code. For example, you can do this in Ruby on Rails' code.
<%= ENV["MY_API"] %>
Is it possible, and if so, how? I'd like to be able to reach it from my existing Heroku infrastructure.
Will I need a Procfile? From what I understand it's just a standalone binary written in Go! so it shouldn't be that hard to deploy it, I'm just curious how to deploy it because I don't think I understand the ins and outs of Heroku deployment.
Heroku Dynos should not be used to deploy a database application like InfluxDB.
Dynos are ephemeral servers. Data does not persist between dyno restarts and cannot be shared with other dynos. Practically speaking, any database application deployed on a dyno is essentially useless. This is why databases on Heroku (e.g. Postgres) are all Add-ons. InfluxDB should be set up on a different platform (like, AWS EC2 or a VPS) since a Heroku Add-on is not available.
That said, it is possible to deploy InfluxDB to a Heroku dyno.
To get started, it is important to understand the concept of a 'slug'. Slugs are containers (similar to a Docker images) which hold everything needed to run a program on Heroku's infrastructure. To deploy InfluxDB, an InfluxDB slug needs to be created.* There are two ways to create a slug for Go libraries:
Create a slug directly from a Go executable as described here.**
Build the slug from source using the Heroku Go buildpack (explained below).
To build the slug from source using a buildpack, first clone the InfluxDB Github repo. Then add a Procfile at the root of the repo, which tells Heroku the command to run when the dyno starts up.
echo 'web: ./influxd' > Procfile
The Go buildpack requires all dependencies be included in the directory. Use the godep dependency tool to vendor all dependencies into the directory.
go get github.com/tools/godep
godep save
Next, commit the changes made above to the git repo.
git add -A .
git commit -m dependencies
Finally, create a new app and tell it to compile with the Go buildpack.
heroku create -b https://github.com/kr/heroku-buildpack-go.git
git push heroku master
heroku open // Open the newly created InfluxDB instance in the browser.
Heroku will show an error page. An error will be displayed because Heroku's 'web' process type requires an app to listen for incoming requests on the port described by the $PORT environment variable, otherwise it will kill the dyno. InfluxDB's API and admin panel run on ports 8086 and 8083, respectively.
Unfortunately, InfluxDB does not allow those ports to be set from environment variables, only through the config file (/etc/config.toml). A small bash script executed before InfluxDB starts up could set the correct port in the config file before InfluxDB starts up.
Another problem, Heroku only exposes one port per dyno so the API and the admin panel cannot be exposed to the internet at the same time. A smart reverse proxy could work around that issue using Heroku's X-Forwarded-Port request header.
Bottom line, do not use Heroku dynos to run InfluxDB.
* This means the benefits of a standalone Go executable are lost when deploying to Heroku, since it needs to be recompiled for Heroku's stack.
** Creating a slug directly from the InfluxDB executable does not work because there is no built-in way to listen to the right port given by Heroku in the $PORT environment variable.
I like to think anything is possible on a Heroku node when using a custom buildpack, but there are some considerations when hosting with Heroku:
ops, e.g. backup, monitoring (does it entail installing extra services, opening extra ports, etc - Heroku might get in the way here)
performance, considering dyno size
and if you need a larger dyno, cost becomes an issue. You'll get more bang for your buck when you go the IaaS route.
other "features" of a dyno, e.g. disk ephemerality
I highly recommend hosted InfluxDB or spinning up your own on a VPS, all of which you can point your existing Heroku-based apps to. It will then help to get those instances as close together as possible (i.e. same region, or co-located if possible), presuming a need for low latency between DB and app stack.