7.3.9.1. WAR Deployment to Heroku
Heroku account

First, create an account on Heroku using the web browser, free account hobby-dev is enough. Then login to the account and create new application using New button at the top of the page.

Select unique name (or left the field blank to assign automatically) and choose a server location. Now you have an application, for example, morning-beach-4895, this is the Heroku application name.

At the first time, you will be redirected to the Deploy tab. Use Heroku Git deployment method.

Heroku CLI

  • Install Heroku CLI on your computer.

  • Navigate to the folder containing your CUBA project. Further on we will use $PROJECT_FOLDER for it.

  • Open command prompt in $PROJECT_FOLDER and type:

    heroku login

  • Enter your credentials when prompted. From now on you don’t need to enter credentials for this project anymore.

  • Install Heroku CLI deployment plugin:

    heroku plugins:install heroku-cli-deploy
PostgreSQL database

Using the web browser go to Heroku data page

You can choose existent Postgres database or create one. Next steps describe how to create a new database.

  • Find Heroku Postgres block and click Create one

  • On the next screen click Install Heroku Postgr…​

  • Connect the database to Heroku application selected from a dropdown list

  • Select your Plan (for example: hobby-dev)

Alternatively, you can install PostgreSQL using Heroku CLI:

heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev --app morning-beach-4895

Here morning-beach-4895 is your Heroku application name.

Now you can find the new database on the Resources tab. The database is connected to the Heroku application. To obtain database credentials go to the Datasource page of your Heroku database, scroll down to Administration section and click View credentials button.

Host compute.amazonaws.com
Database d2tk
User nmmd
Port 5432
Password 9c05
URI postgres://nmmd:9c05@compute.amazonaws.com:5432/d2tk
Project deployment settings

  • We assume that you use PostgreSQL with your CUBA project.

  • Open your CUBA project in Studio, navigate to Deployment settings, go to WAR tab and then configure options as described below.

    • Select Build WAR

    • Set application home directory to '.' (dot)

    • Select Include JDBC driver

    • Select Include Tomcat’s context.xml

    • Click Generate button next to the Custom context.xml path field. Fill your database connection details in modal window.

    • Open the file generated modules/core/web/META-INF/war-context.xml and check connection params and credentials:

    • Select Single WAR for Middleware and Web Client

    • Click Generate button next to the Custom web.xml path field

    • Copy the code shown below and paste it into the App properties field:

      [
  'cuba.automaticDatabaseUpdate' : true
]

    • Save deployment settings.

Build WAR file

Build WAR file by executing the buildWar Gradle task. You can do it right from the Studio Search dialog or from the command line:

gradlew buildWar

In order to use gradlew command in the command line, create Gradle wrapper using Studio Build menu command beforehand.

Application setup

  • Download Tomcat Webapp Runner from https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.github.jsimone/webapp-runner. The version of Webapp Runner must conform to the Tomcat version in use. For example, version 8.5.11.3 of Webapp Runner is suitable for Tomcat version 8.5.11. Rename JAR to webapp-runner.jar and place it into $PROJECT_FOLDER.

  • Download Tomcat DBCP from https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.apache.tomcat/tomcat-dbcp. Use the version corresponding to your Tomcat version, for example, 8.5.11. Create $PROJECT_FOLDER/libs, rename JAR to tomcat-dbcp.jar and place it into the $PROJECT_FOLDER/libs folder.

  • Create a file named Procfile in $PROJECT_FOLDER. The file should contain the following text:

    web: java $JAVA_OPTS -cp webapp-runner.jar:libs/* webapp.runner.launch.Main --enable-naming --port $PORT build/distributions/war/app.war
Git setup

Open the command prompt in $PROJECT_FOLDER and run the commands listed below:

git init
heroku git:remote -a morning-beach-4895
git add .
git commit -am "Initial commit"
Application deployment

Open the command prompt and run the following command:

On *nix:

heroku jar:deploy webapp-runner.jar --includes libs/tomcat-dbcp.jar:build/distributions/war/app.war --app morning-beach-4895

On Windows:

heroku jar:deploy webapp-runner.jar --includes libs\tomcat-dbcp.jar;build\distributions\war\app.war --app morning-beach-4895

Open the Resources tab in Heroku dashboard. A new Dyno should appear with a command from your Procfile:

heroku dyno

The application is deploying now. You can monitor logs to track the process.

Logs monitoring

Wait for a message https://morning-beach-4895.herokuapp.com/ deployed to Heroku in command window.

In order to track application logs, run the following command on the command line:

heroku logs --tail --app morning-beach-4895

After the deployment process is completed your application will be accessible in web browser by an URL like https://morning-beach-4895.herokuapp.com.

You can also open the application from the Heroku dashboard using the Open app button.