Deploy online

Nelisa wants to see her statistics on a web page from her smartphone.

The Heroku deployment process is built on top of git. To deploy there you need to add Heroku as a git remote (so far we’ve been using GitHub as the origin remote). The Heroku documentation will guide you through the required steps.

Please note:

• You applications package.json file’s dependencies sections should contain all the modules your application depends on. So that Heroku knows which modules to install. Installing modules using npm install --save <module_name> will keep your package.json up to date.

• The dependencies section of your application’s package.json file should contain all the modules your application depends on; Heroku will use it to install your modules. When you’re developing your application, installing modules using npm install --save <module_name>. This adds the module(s) to your package.json so that it’s kept up to date.

• Make sure your applications port number is configurable using the PORT environment variable. This enables Heroku to change the PORT number your application is started on:

//set the port number to an existing environment variable PORT or default to 5000
app.set('port', (process.env.PORT || 5000));
//start the app like this:
app.listen(app.get('port'), function() {
  console.log('Node app is running on port', app.get('port'));
});

Deploy your Express application online using Heroku.

Learning areas

• Web application deployment using Heroku;
• How to deploy an existing NodeJS Web App to Heroku.