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Saf11000
Saf11000

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Deploy Laravel application with database to Heroku

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Why Heroku?

I would like to start my blog with the question “why” as there are lots of technologies to choose from that are maybe better and more convenient to use but after all, it’s all about personal preferences.

So why Heroku?

Heroku is a public PaaS (Platform as a Service) provider that makes it easy to deploy applications written using several technology stacks at no cost. Application developers all around the globe use Heroku-like services to implement and test their applications remotely without any pain.
It’s free and easy to use.

Prepare your Laravel app

On this tutorial, I will use the repo : https://github.com/rappasoft/laravel-boilerplate. Laravel Boilerplate provides you with a massive head start on any size web application. It comes with a full featured access control system out of the box with an easy to learn API and is built on a Bootstrap foundation with a front and backend architecture. A big thanks to all who made contributions to this open source laravel app. Go ahead, fork and clone that repo or you can use your own depending on your preference.

I assume you tested your app on local and everything worked fine before proceeding to set up the heroku.

Prepare your Heroku CLI
You can download heroku-cli at:

https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli#download-and-install.

Download and install Heroku according to your OS.
Once installation is finished, go back to your terminal and try to execute:

heroku login

The heroku login will appear. Click login.
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When you go back to your terminal you will see something like this:
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Create Procfile inside your main Laravel

Inside your Procfile, put this code line.
web: vendor/bin/heroku-php-apache2 public/

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Go back to your terminal and type:

git init - This is for git initialization
heroku create - This command will create your app and repository name in Heroku

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After that, commit and push your project to Heroku.

git add .
git commit –m “first commit”
git push heroku master
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Now, go to heroku dashboard, you will see something like this.
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Try to access your app by clicking Open app button.
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This will give you a 500 server error because we have not set any configuration from our .env file on our Laravel app into Heroku.

Add Config Vars setttings in Heroku

Click settings then add the config vars like below. Follow some config in your .env file. The APP_ENV is production while APP_URL is your heroku url. Please refer below my configuration.
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Try to access your app. You should see your app is successfully deployed now.
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Configure database
Lastly, we will configure our database so that we can run migrations and seeders in Heroku. Actually, we can use MySQL but we need to upgrade our membership. That’s why in this tutorial, we will be using PostgreSQL because it’s free. :)

Click on Resources Menu. Then search for Postgres.
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Click install Heroku Postgres. After successful installation, heroku postgres is available in our dashboard resources just like below.

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After that, go to your terminal and type:

heroku config
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Take note on your DATABASE_URL.

Change DATABASE_URL to the url on your heroku config.

Sample Heroku config setup:

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Set pgsql as your default database setup.

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So far, this is the best practice I know. Please read comments section for details or share better practice you know :).

Now, we will commit and push our changes in heroku repo. In your terminal run these commands below.

git add .
git commit –m “update db connection”
git push heroku master

Then, run migration in heroku.

heroku run php artisan migrate
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After migration, don’t forget to execute
heroku run php artisan db:seed
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Then access your heroku app

http://whispering-wave-57771.herokuapp.com/.
Use the email and password below to explore laravel-boilerplate.
email: admin@admin.com
password: secret
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To rename your app, execute the ff:

heroku apps:rename newname

There you have it! You now have a running laravel-boilerplate app with database deployed in heroku.

Hopefully this tutorial is useful to you.

Ending this tutorial with something I read last night which I think is worth sharing. 🙂

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https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/05/14/the-most-successful-developers-share-more-than-they-take/

Top comments (25)

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moghwan profile image
Marwane

Hi and thanks, this worked like a charm in laravel 7. just a quick note in database.php I changed only the default cnnection to pgsql and added DB_DATABASE as env variable in heroku dashboard. thanks again!

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safventure11000 profile image
Saf11000

Happy to help! :) and ohh I'll take note on the db settings. Thank you so much :)

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iamhabbeboy profile image
Azeez Abiodun Solomon

Thanks for sharing this 🤝, but instead of doing this

On your laravel app go to config/database.php file, and put this code on the top.

$DATABASE_URL=parse_url(‘DATABASE_URL’);
Change DATABASE_URL to the url on your heroku config.
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Why not add them to environment variable on Heroku, I guess that much better and neater. It works for me though ☺️.

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safventure11000 profile image
Saf11000 • Edited

Yep! Actually, this was mentioned in the other comments but I wasn't able to find time to update my blog. Now that you gave me this, I will go ahead and update it. Thanks for sharing.

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imanservisi profile image
Isabelle Manservisi

Thanks for this tutorial. It helped me a lot for my first deployment !

Some things to note :

  • with mySQL, it's free, even if heroku require to enter your credit card (no charge at all).
  • don't forget to go in your database Dashboard (in Heroku, click on your addon) and fill your .env with the correct values of host/user... For the password, put it in your heroku config var, so no one can catch it. And do the same in your database.php
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safventure11000 profile image
Saf11000

Nice! Happy to know that. And thank you for sharing your notes. :) Happy new year!

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beingwaqas profile image
beingwaqas

Hey,

When I run the migration command

heroku run php artisan migrate

I get the following error:

In Connection.php line 671:

SQLSTATE[22023]: Invalid parameter value: 7 ERROR: invalid value for param

eter "client_encoding": "utf8mb4" (SQL: select * from information_schema.ta

bles where table_schema = public and table_name = migrations and table_type

= 'BASE TABLE')

In PostgresConnector.php line 68:

SQLSTATE[22023]: Invalid parameter value: 7 ERROR: invalid value for param

eter "client_encoding": "utf8mb4"

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safventure11000 profile image
Saf11000 • Edited

hmmm. did you set pgsql as your default database? Alt Text

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mmimonir profile image
Md. Monirul Islam

Build Failed
show this message-
There are no commands defined in the "ide-helper" namespace.

   Script @php artisan ide-helper:generate handling the post-autoload-dump event returned with error code 1
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! WARNING: A post-autoload-dump script terminated with an error
! ERROR: Dependency installation failed!
!

! The 'composer install' process failed with an error. The cause
! may be the download or installation of packages, or a pre- or
! post-install hook (e.g. a 'post-install-cmd' item in 'scripts')
! in your 'composer.json'.
!

! Typical error cases are out-of-date or missing parts of code,
! timeouts when making external connections, or memory limits.
!

! Check the above error output closely to determine the cause of
! the problem, ensure the code you're pushing is functioning
! properly, and that all local changes are committed correctly.
!

! For more information on builds for PHP on Heroku, refer to
! devcenter.heroku.com/articles/php-...
!

! REMINDER: the following warnings were emitted during the build;
! check the details above, as they may be related to this error:
! - A post-autoload-dump script terminated with an error
! Push rejected, failed to compile PHP app.
! Push failed

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safventure11000 profile image
Saf11000

Hi,

Try these steps:

  1. Remove the line about "barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper" from require-dev on composer.json file.
  2. Then in your terminal execute : composer require barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper
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aldiazhar profile image
aldiazhar

Thank you for the tutor. When I tried the "git push heroku master" command. This error always appears.

Generating optimized autoload files
> Illuminate\Foundation\ComposerScripts::postAutoloadDump
> @php artisan package:discover --ansi
In Connection.php line 671:
SQLSTATE[22023]: Invalid parameter value: 7 ERROR: invalid value for param

eter "client_encoding": "utf8mb4" (SQL: select * from "products" where "pro

ducts"."deleted_at" is null limit 8) In PostgresConnector.php line 68:

SQLSTATE[22023]: Invalid parameter value: 7 ERROR: invalid value for param

eter "client_encoding": "utf8mb4"

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safventure11000 profile image
Saf11000

I think you have the same error with @beingwaqas .. did you set pgsql as your default db?

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ellis22 profile image
Ellis

Nice article, straightforward and easy to understand.
I also suggest to watch this video as well: Deploy Laravel App on Heroku

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safventure11000 profile image
Saf11000 • Edited

Glad you liked it. :) I will check this video. Thanks.

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moatazabdalmageed profile image
Moataz Mohammady

Thanks but I want to install npm packages.

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jamols09 profile image
jamols09

I hope you could also create instructions for deploying two separate projects using AWS using laravel (backend) vuejs (frontend).

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njose profile image
Sebastian Njose

You're amazing! Thank u so muchh!! <3