Deploying a Static Astro Site on Railway

Astro is a framework for building websites. Railway is a platform for hosting web apps. This guide shows you how you can host an Astro website on Railway.

Prerequisites

• GitHub Account
• Railway Account
• Node.js

Create Astro app

On your local machine, create a new folder named 'my-app'.

mkdir my-app

Open my-app.

cd my-app

Create a package.json file and add the following:

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "astro dev",
    "start": "astro dev",
    "build": "astro build",
    "preview": "astro preview"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "astro": "^4.16.5"
  }
}

Install the dependencies.

npm install

Create a src/pages folder and add a src/pages/index.astro file.

mkdir -p src/pages && touch src/pages/index.astro

Add this to src/pages/index.astro

<h1>Hello, World!</h1>

Run the development server.

npm run dev

Visit http://localhost:4321 to view your site.

lynx localhost:4321

Build Site

Stop your server and build your Astro site:

npm run build

Astro will produce a dist folder containing the static site you will deploy.

Preview your build:

npm run preview

Deploy to Railway

Install the Railway CLI tool:

npm i -g @railway/cli

Login to your Railway account:

railway login --browserless

Create a new Railway project:

railway init

Link the dist folder to your Railway project.

Change working directory to dist.

cd dist

Link current directory, i.e. dist to your Railway project.

railway link

Deploy your app.

railway up --detach

When site is ready, generate a domain.

railway domain

Test Deployment

lynx <YOUR-APP-DOMAIN>

Update Site and Redeploy

Update home page, src/pages/index.astro:

<h1>Hello World!</h1>
<p>Happy to be here</p>

Test update locally:

npm run dev

Rebuild site:

npm run build

Redeploy to Railway.

cd dist && railway up --detach