Web_Dev_Grad

See the GitHub pages section on how to deploy your static site through GitHub pages.

Heroku is a cloud-based PaaS that allows developers to build, run, and scale web applications without managing the underlying server infrastructure. It abstracts away the complexities of deployment, letting you focus on writing code rather than configuring servers or networking.

You'd use Heroku when you want an easy, reliable way to deploy and host your web applications, especially for frameworks like Django and Flask.

Useful Documentation

On the Heroku Dashboard you can click on "Documentation" along the footer and it will take you to the dev centre with information on getting started, reference materials, tutorials which is very handle for referring back to during your deployment.

Dynos

Dynos in Heroku are Heroku managed Linux containers. The one's that we are most interested in are the web dynos that are containers where your application code runs. Hosting on Heroku is not free and they offer tiers of Dynos to pick from. The Eco Dyno will cover most of your personal development for only $5 a month.

Dynos can be selected from the billing section of your account settings and set in an app from the overview page.

Create a New App

To create a new app in Heroku, head to the Dashboard and click on "create new app". Add a unique app name with no spaces (use hyphens instead of spaces) and set your correction region. Then click on "create app" and you should see this app appear on your dashboard.

The Heroku CLI

The Heroku CLI is a command-line tool provided by Heroku that lets you manage your apps, dynos, add-ons, config variables, logs, and deployments directly from your terminal. The CLI integrates with Git so you can push your code, scale processes, view logs, run one-off commands. Using the CLI means you don't have to manage servers or infrastructure directly. It's especially convenient for Django projects as you can treat deployment almost like your git pushes. Despite it's ease of use, I usually configure my apps through the dashboard correctly and rely on the CLI for troubleshooting.

To install the CLI, first make sure you have Git installed and your project is under version control because Heroku will use a Git-remote to receive your code. Download and install the Heroku CLI for your OS. After installation, you can check that it has worked by opening your terminal and running:

heroku --version

You can access it in your terminal by running:

heroku login

It will prompt you to press any button to open a browser to confirm your login so just enter your account details there to authorise it. You can then see all possible commands with:

heroku

Then further information on each command can be seen by adding the command name and appending "help".

heroku command_name help

Most commands in the CLI will need to be app specific so will mostly have appended:

--app my-unique-app-name

Here are some common commands to use in the Heroku CLI that you will need at some point or another:

Preparing Your Django Project

Before deploying your Django project on Heroku, certain changes and additions will need to be made. Firstly if you have a backend, you will need to have that hosted somewhere rather than locally with SQLite. This can be done through a Heroku Postgres addon.

Preparing Your Django Project: Installs

Preparing Your Django Project: Files

Preparing Your Django Project: settings.py

Update your project settings.py file ALLOWED_HOSTS variable with the URL for your Heroku app. This can be found in the dashboard for your app, then go Settings and you can see it listed in your "Domains". It will look something like app_name5141515vsd1as6.herokuapp.com. Remember to leave out the "https://" when you add it.

ALLOWED_HOSTS = [
    'localhost',
    '127.0.0.1',
    'webdevgrad-randomlettersandnumbers.herokuapp.com'
]

If using a database, import dj_database_url at the top. dj-database-url is a small Python utility library that parses a database URL string into Django's DATABASES configuration format. It simply takes a single string like postgres://username:password@hostname:5432/dbname and turns it into the structured dictionary Django expects in settings.py. Then update your DATABASE to check if there is a Heroku DATABASE_URL to use your database URL defined in your env.py file or to use the local one if in development.

# With other imports
import dj_database_url

# Database management
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/5.1/ref/settings/#databases
if 'DATABASE_URL' in os.environ:
    # External database
    DATABASES = {
        'default': dj_database_url.parse(
            os.environ['DATABASE_URL']
        )
    }
else:
    # Local database
    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
            'NAME': BASE_DIR / 'db.sqlite3',
        }
    }

Config Vars

When your site is deployed, it will not have access to your env.py file that is only stored locally on your system. The configuration variables is where you will transfer these keys to, to be kept secure on Heroku. They are found in Settings > Config Var in your app dashboard. Click "reveal config vars" to show them. Then go through and add all of your defined variables in env.py using the exact variable name and values. Add an extra DEBUG False variable here so that DEBUG is turned off in your deployed app.

Deploy Through GitHub

Now all that is left is to deploy your app from GitHub. In your app dashboard go to "Deploy" and here you can set your deployment method to GitHub, connect your correct repository and then either set it to automatically deploy when GitHub is updated or let you manually deploy when you want instead of after each change you make. With your app set up, you can see what it looks like by scrolling to the top and clicking on "Open app".