Using fee based production environment for testing is quite expensive for a project that's most likely isn't a paid one probably trying to build up a portfolio as a developer to show case your skills to the world. There are quite a number of platforms that can be use for testing apps with the feel of a production environment but in this article we'll be hosting laravel application on Heroku with database.

Glad right!!! Let's get started

Heroku is a Platform as a Service cloud computing system that can be used to deploy applications similar to production servers. It enhances continuous integration and continuous deployment at ease to keep the project updated with the local machine or Github repository.

Imagine using a command as simple as git push master heroku to make changes to a live website so the client can be kept abreast with the development and updates of the product. Super cool right?

In this tutorial we'll be creating a basic authentication app using laravel. Heroku has support for PHP application hence we can deploy the laravel application without the tussle of server configuration.

Let's start with a fresh laravel app installation

laravel new deploy_laravelapp_on_heroku

OR

composer create-project laravel/deploy_laravelapp_on_heroku

After successful installation change directory to deploy_laravelapp_on_heroku

cd deploy_laravelapp_on_heroku

To keep this article simple we'll require the laravel ui for authentication scaffolding which won't be supported in future version of laravel.

More so if you really want to stick to the new scaffolding using laravel fortify without requiring laravel ui you could take a look at this tutorial

Next

composer require laravel/ui

php artisan ui bootstrap --auth

npm install && npm run dev

if it fails to compile the assets or throws an error run this command again

Next

npm run dev

Next

php artisan serve

If everything was done properly you should see this on the browser

since we're using herokuapp for the hosting we don't need to modify the .env file for database configuration.

Next open the project in your favorite editor Create a file called Procfile

Note no extension for this file

Procfile

Please note the spelling Procfile

Next open the file and paste the snippet below. What this does is to inform heroku on how to locate the index.php file as the web root of the application.

web: vendor/bin/heroku-php-apache2 public/

We can directly host laravel applications to heroku without having to push it to Github which is pretty easy but we'll be pushing our app to Github and then link it to an app on heroku.

After creating a repository on Github let's link the local app to the remote repository.

git init

Next

git add .

Next

git commit -m "deploy laravel app on heroku"

Next

git branch -M main

Next

git remote add origin https://github.com/RaphAlemoh/deploy_laravelapp_on_heroku.git

Next

git push -u origin main

Next

If you don't have an account on heroku you can create one here

We can create an app on Heroku dashboard or from the Heroku Toolbelt basically similar to the command line prompt.

On the app directory on CMD run the following command

heroku login

Enter your login details so we can run commands from cmd to Heroku without opening the browser

After successful login next is to create the app. If we don't specify the name Heroku will create a random name for the app.

heroku create hosting-laravel-app-on-heroku

Run

git remote -v

Please note

If the github repository name is same as the app name on heroku it automatically sets the Github repository by default but in a case where the repository name is not same with the heroku app name you can run the command below to sync heroku with the github repository from the command prompt

heroku git:remote -a heroku-app-name

Next open the .env file on laravel project copy the APP_KEY and paste it

heroku config:set APP_KEY=paste_the_app_key_here

If you want to see the errors set the debug to true but after testing please ensure to turn it to false you can do so with a command on cmd or go to the config var on heroku dashboard and update it.

heroku config:unset APP_DEBUG

Also note you can use (add or set)

Next

heroku config:set  APP_DEBUG=true

Next

heroku config:add APP_ENV=production

Next

heroku config:add APP_URL="http://hosting-laravel-app-on-heroku.herokuapp.com/"

Next

heroku config:add APP_NAME="hosting laravel app on heroku"

Database connection - the big part!!!

We'll setup postgre database(easy and it's free with 5mb that's quite large for testing purposes yea!) since we're having a need to communicate with a database to store user details

heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev

To connect the app with Heroku we need to setup the environment variables run the commands below to get the details of the remote database created

heroku pg:credentials:url

Next

heroku config:add DB_CONNECTION="pgsql"

Next copy the dbhost=value.amazonaws.com

heroku config:add DB_HOST="....amazonaws.com"

Next copy the port=6232

heroku config:add DB_PORT="6232"

Next copy the dbname=de9qtoert7ycce2

heroku config:add DB_DATABASE="de9qtoert7ycce2"

Next copy the user=afzaottphzualakatu

heroku config:add DB_USERNAME="afzaottphzualakatu"

Next copy the password=ye36ee6116736d31fuytr23465a0af6a340308ae28347t5g4trg2f76tr3t76

heroku config:add DB_PASSWORD="ye36ee6116736d31fuytr23465a0af6a340308ae28347t5g4trg2f76tr3t76"

Next run the command below to update the heroku github repository

git push heroku main

If all things were done properly you should get this image

Next

heroku run bash

Next

php artisan migrate:fresh

Next (you'll be prompted to confirm you want to run such query) type yes and press enter

yes

Our app can be accessed by anyone in the world! Yea yea awesome...

http://hosting-laravel-app-on-heroku.herokuapp.com/

Congratulations we've successfully hosted a laravel app on Heroku with database.

Github repository for this tutorial

Thank you for reading this article.

Stay tune for the next article on how to handle file uploads on Heroku using Cloudinary

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