It was time for me to prepare for a live demo at a meetup. As always, I used Heroku, my go-to deployment service. Unexpectedly, I discovered that Heroku no longer offers a free version 😱 and it's time to explore alternatives. After investigating some alternatives, I found Railway.app, which provides Node.js hosting, database hosting, and a great developer experience.

Railway.app has a great free plan, which includes 5$ monthly credits and a 500-hour limit that disappears as soon as you enter your credit card details. With these credits, you can run approximately two full sites with a database and still have a few cents left over 😋.

To demonstrate the deployment process with Railway we'll use the following GitHub repository that I've created in my last BudapestJS meetup Todo Demo, using Remult.

git clone https://github.com/noam-honig/budapestjs-meetup

Once you've cloned the project, it is actually ready for deployment, but let's review some of the key settings I've set for it before the deployment in src/backend/index.ts file:

Preparing the app for deployment

1. Postgres connection string - To set a database connection for Remult, we need to set the dataProvider property, and here we've done that with createPostgresConnection.

   On line 44 in src/backend/index.ts file:

    connectionString: process.env['DATABASE_URL'] ||  'postgres://postgres:MASTERKEY@localhost/postgres'
   

   We've configured the postgres database connection string to the connection string received as an environment variable called DATABASE_URL.

   That environment variable will be automatically set by railway.app to the correct connection string for the associated project.

2. Port - On line 58 in src/backend/index.ts file:

    app.listen(process.env['PORT'])
   

   We've configured express to listen on the port that it receives as an environment variable - that port will be set by the railway.app environment according to their required configuration.

3. Session Secret- On line 13 in src/backend/index.ts file:

    app.use('/api', session({
       secret: process.env['SESSION_SECRET'] || 'my secret' 
    }))
   

   We've configured the sessions's connection string to also be determined by an environment variable - that variable will be set by us on the project settings on railway.app.

Setup a railway.app account

1. Visit railway.app and create an account.

2. Install the railway.app cli

    npm i -g @railway/cli
   

3. Sign in to railway:

    railway login
   

   And hit Enter, to login by the browser:

    Press Enter to open the browser (^C to quit)
   

Deploy your app to railway

1. In your project folder, type:

    railway init
   

   Answer a few questions and as soon as you're done - railway will create the project and open it in the browser.

2. In the project console in the browser, select Add a Service and choose Database, then Add PostgreSQL.

   

   At this stage, railway will create the Postgres database for this project.

3. Once the database is setup, go back to the terminal in your project folder and type:

    railway up
   

   This will upload your source code to Railway. Wait until the deployment is complete, without errors:

    ======= Build Completed ======
   
    Waiting for deploy to finish
    ☁️ Deployment logs available at https://railway.app/project/......
    OR run `railway logs` to tail them here
   
    ☁️ Deployment is live
   

   Once the source code is uploaded, Railway will run the following commands automatically:

   1. npm ci: installs all the necessary npm packages.

   2. npm run build: builds the project

   3. npm run start: runs the project.

Make sure that the build and start scripts in your package.json do what you want them to do :)

1. Once railway.app is building the project, we'll need to assign it a url that works. On your browser:

   1. Find your newly deployed project in the Railway project dashboard, near the Postgress service.

      You might need to refresh the page to see it.

   2. Click on the deployed project.

   3. Click on the Deployments tab. You can read the deployment logs to make sure there were no errors.

   4. Click on the Settings tab.

   5. Under Environment, Scroll to the Domain title and click the Generate Domain button.

      It will generate a domain that you can use to open your app.

      

   6. Click on the generated url - and be a little patient - it will take it a few minutes to be up and running.

Here's a video of our BudapestJS meetup where we used this method as part of our demo, where we showed how to turn a front-end React app into a full-stack app using Node.js, Postgres, and Remult. The video's timeline is positioned at the deployment stage. testing