Deploy two separate heroku apps from same git repo

Question

Within one git repo, I have two separate applications (web server and API server).

How can I deploy each application to its own Heroku app?

(So there are 2 heroku apps, one for the web server and one for the api server)

Note (before marking as duplicate): There are several questions similar to this. Most deal with deploying one app to two heroku apps - typically for the purpose of staging vs. production. I am looking to deploy two apps to two heroku apps. (Question about staging vs prod)

Johannejohannes

Answer 1

My understanding of your question is that you have one Git repository, that contains two entirely separate programs: one API server, and one web server.

With this assumption in mind, here's what you'll want to do, step-by-step:

1. Go into your project folder.
2. Define a Procfile at the root of your project. This will tell Heroku how to run your web server and your API server.

Here's how you might want your Procfile to look (an example):

web: node web/index.js
api: node api/index.js

In my example above: I'm defining two types of Heroku dynos -- one called web and one called api. For each one, you'll need to tell Heroku what command to run to start the appropriate server. In this example, I would run node web/index.js to start up my website, and node api/index.js to start up my API service.

3. Create two new Heroku applications. You can do this by running heroku create <desired-app-name> --remote <desired-app-name> multiple times. NOTE: The --remote flag will tell Heroku to create a Git remote for each of your applications in the same repo.

4. Next, you'll need to tell Heroku to run your actual web application on one Heroku app, and your API service on another Heroku app. You can do this by using the Heroku CLI:

   $ heroku ps:scale web=1 --remote webserver-app-name
   $ heroku ps:scale api=1 --remote apiserver-app-name
   

These commands will:

• Run a single web dyno for your webserver Heroku app.
• Run a single API dyno for your apiserver Heroku app.

As you can see above, using the ps:scale command you can control what types of commands Heroku will run from your Procfile, and how many instances of each you'd like to have.

Hopefully this helps!

Woodwork

Thanks rdegges, I'll give this a try today. Question though - will I just do git push heroku-api master and git push heroku-web master to push my master branch to each separate heroku app? – Johannejohannes

Ah, when you want to push your mast branch you'll do: git push heroku-api master; git push heroku-web master; to deploy it to both projects =) Instead of the usual git push heroku master you'll do this, because instead of the heroku remote you now have two remotes: heroku-web and heroku-api. Hope that makes sense! – Woodwork

This is great, but you need to somehow install dependencies too. I did that by putting npm install in the script to run my apps from subfolders. Isn't perfect, but I don't know how to do it on push. – Evangelist

You don't have to do that. It will install them automatically upon push. – Woodwork

@Woodwork This doesn't work for me because Heroku says there is no web process type. How can I tell Heroku that for example, api is my web process type for an app? – Yirinec

This can't work, because Heroku allows only web to receive incoming requests, eg act as a http server. I am also now struggling to figure it out. But this is not the way. – Trainor

Heroku recently changed their behavior, it appears. This used to work. It looks like doing this now requires you to have two separate Procfiles entirely. – Woodwork

Answer 2

The solution suggested by rdegges unfortunately does not work anymore. See:

The web process type is special as it’s the only process type that will receive HTTP traffic from Heroku’s routers. Other process types can be named arbitrarily.

from the Heroku documentation. So you won't be able to have api and web in a Procfile both exposing web apps.

Up-to-date solution

The correct way to tackle this is to use this buildpack provided by the Heroku team: Heroku Multi Procfile buildpack:

Imagine you have a single code base, which has a few different applications within it... or at least the ability to run a few different applications. Or, maybe you're Google with your mono repo?

In any case, how do you manage this on Heroku? You don't. Heroku applications assume one repo to one application.

Enter the Multi Procfile buildpack, where every app gets a Procfile!

I've been using this buildpack for multiple months now on a repository using yarn workspaces (multiple Node and React apps in one repo) and everything works fine.

Monogamy

Hello, Could you please explain the following step: "For each app, set PROCFILE=relative/path/to/Procfile/in/your/codebase, and of course: heroku buildpacks:add -a github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-multi-procfile" I have 2 procfiles, one is in the root and another is under the backend folder. procfile1 = web: npm run build procfile2 = api: node backend/server What exactly does in mean "For each app, set PROCFILE=relative/path/to/Procfile/in/your/codebase" What needs to be done here? Thanks – Knurly

@Knurly Here PROCFILE refers to an environment variable. You can read more about it here in the Heroku doc: devcenter.heroku.com/articles/config-vars#managing-config-vars You would need to have two Heroku apps, one for your front-end and one for your back-end, and set the PROCFILE env variable to the path of each Procfile respectively. I wrote an article with a bit more details here: medium.com/inato/… Let me know if this helps. – Monogamy

Thanks! What is the sequence of starting all of the apps? Do I just run "git push heroku master" and both procfiles will run? I don't seem to get my backend app to run. – Knurly

how about the slug, do they share the same one? – Trevar

Answer 3

If you have two separate application then you can simply push repository sub-tree to each.

Setup remotes once

heroku git:remote --remote heroku-client -a client-app
heroku git:remote --remote heroku-server -a server-app

And then you can deploy through pushing sub-tree to the remote

git subtree push --prefix client heroku-client master
git subtree push --prefix server heroku-server master

(where --prefix points to app's root folder)

Audile

How can I force push using this git subtree push? – Bennir

And how can I add commit before pushing using subtree? – Bennir

Answer 4

We can add to the customized script to deploy a particular folder in our git directory to our npm scripts in the package.json file. Check the below code in the package.json file

"scripts": {
    "start": "node app.js",
    "publishheroku": "cd ../../ && git subtree push --prefix nodeapps/appone heroku-app-one master || true"
  },

then you can run npm run-script publishheroku to deploy.

Also, go through this link for detailed explanation.

Goblet

Answer 5

Due to the fact that Heroku doesn't allow more than one Procfile and it should have only one web key for HTTP traffic and port allocations. So, that's how I overcome this limit (Dynamic entry point through env vars)

• Assuming we have two Heroku apps, define an envireonment variable for each entry point at both apps.

  • App 1: INDEX_PATH='./1/index.js'
  • App 2: INDEX_PATH='./2/index.js'

• Create Procfile with the following contents

web: npm run start-heroku

• At `package.json, add the following script

"start-heroku": "node heroku.js",

• Create heroku.js with the following contents

const Path = require('path')

require(Path.join(__dirname, process.env.INDEX_PATH))

Now, when we deploy App 1, Heroku will execute Procfile (web) that will execute heroku.js and based on INDEX_PATH env var, the target app will start!

Diminished

Answer 6

I faced a similar issue. In my case, I had a single GitHub repo with a React front end in a folder and an API in another folder.

After a bit of googling, I found a buildpack that let me deploy sub-folders on Heroku. I used the buildpack and created a couple of projects on Heroku to deploy both the API and the React Front End.

The buildpack is https://github.com/timanovsky/subdir-heroku-buildpack

I wrote a step-by-step article along with screenshots in the below article.

https://www.realpythonproject.com/how-to-setup-automated-deployment-for-multiple-apps-under-a-single-github-repository-in-heroku/

Elagabalus

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Thank You for the feedback! I will update my answer. – Elagabalus

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