Production Mode and Cloud Deployment to Heroku
In this last chapter, you prepare the CRM application for production and deploy it to Heroku. The tutorial uses Heroku because it is simple and comes with a free tier that does not require a credit card when signing up. The free tier also includes PostgreSQL support.
Note | You can deploy Hilla applications on any cloud provider You can deploy Hilla applications on any cloud provider or hosting service that supports Java.
The project also contains a |
This chapter covers:
Hilla production builds,
creating a Heroku account,
installing the Heroku CLI,
creating and deploying a Heroku application.
Preparing the Application for Production
It’s important to build a separate production-optimized version of the application before deploying it. In development mode, Hilla has a live-reload widget, debug logging, and uses a quick, but unoptimized, frontend build that includes source maps for easy debugging. Unoptimized frontend bundles can contain several megabytes of JavaScript.
The pom.xml
build includes a production
profile configuration that prepares an optimized build that’s ready for production.
Using a PostgreSQL Database in Production
During development, the application has used an in-memory H2 database. It is convenient and works well for a single user. In production, you want to use something more robust and persistent. Heroku’s free tier supports PostgreSQL, so can configure your application to use that.
First, add the PostgreSQL dependency in the production profile of pom.xml
:
<profile>
<id>production</id>
<!-- Omitted -->
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.postgresql</groupId>
<artifactId>postgresql</artifactId>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</profile>
Next, configure how JPA should handle schema generation.
Add the following two properties to the end of application.properties
.
spring.jpa.generate-ddl=true
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=create-drop
Creating a Heroku Account and Installing Heroku CLI
Complete the following steps to create a Heroku account and install the Heroku CLI.
Go to https://signup.heroku.com/, create a new account, and verify your email.
Go to https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli and follow the instructions for installing the CLI on your operating system.
Deploying a Hilla Application to Heroku
Use the Heroku CLI to create and deploy your application.
Log in:
heroku login
Configure the correct Java version:
echo "java.runtime.version=11" > system.properties
Install the Heroku Java plugin:
heroku plugins:install java
Create a new app. Replace APPNAME with a name of your choice. APPNAME is part of the URL, like https://APPNAME.herokuapp.com, so choose a name that’s unique and easy to remember.
heroku create APPNAME
Create a secret key for your application:
heroku config:set APP_SECRET=$(openssl rand -base64 32)
Enable the PostgreSQL plugin for the newly created app:
heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql -a APPNAME
Deploy the production-optimized JAR file you created in the previous section.
heroku deploy:jar target/fusioncrmtutorial-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar -a APPNAME
Open the application in your browser.
heroku open
View the application logs and see if anything goes wrong.
heroku logs --tail
Conclusion and Next Steps
Congratulations, you have now built a full-stack PWA and deployed it to Heroku.
Did you like the tutorial? Did you find anything that did not seem right? Reach out to me on Twitter @marcushellberg or Hilla’s Discord chat server.
Now that you have a running application, you can use it to experiment further or as a foundation for your next idea.
Happy hacking, and ping us @vaadin on Twitter to show off the cool stuff you have built.