# Heroku

## Manual deployment

This tutorial assumes that you have already managed to clone Consul Democracy on your machine and gotten it to work.

1. First, create a [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com) account if it isn't already done.
2. Install the [Heroku CLI](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli) and sign in using:

```bash
heroku login
```

3. Go to your Consul Democracy repository and instantiate the process:

```bash
cd consuldemocracy
heroku create your-app-name
```

You can add the flag `--region eu` if you want to use their European servers instead of the US ones.

If *your-app-name* is not already taken, Heroku should now create your app.

4. Create a database using:

```bash
heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql
```

You should now have access to an empty Postgres database whose address was automatically saved as an environment variable named *DATABASE\_URL*. Consul Democracy will automatically connect to it when deployed.

5. Now, generate a secret key and save it to an ENV variable named SECRET\_KEY\_BASE using:

```bash
heroku config:set SECRET_KEY_BASE=$(rails secret)
```

Also add your server address:

```bash
heroku config:set SERVER_NAME=myserver.address.com
```

You need to let the app know where the configuration variables are stored by adding a link to the ENV variables in *config/secrets.yml*

```yml
production:
  secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %>
  server_name: <%= ENV["SERVER_NAME"] %>
```

and commit this file in the repo by commenting out the corresponding line in the *.gitignore*.

```gitignore
#/config/secrets.yml
```

**Remember not to commit the file if you have any sensitive information in it!**

6. To ensure Heroku correctly detects and uses the node.js version defined in the project, we need to make the following changes:

In package.json, add the node.js version:

```json
"engines": {
  "node": "20.20.2"
}
```

and apply:

```bash
heroku buildpacks:add heroku/nodejs
```

7. You can now push your app using:

```bash
git push heroku your-branch:master
```

8. It won't work straight away because the database doesn't contain the tables needed. To create them, run:

```bash
heroku run rake db:migrate
heroku run rake db:seed
```

9. Your app should now be ready to use. You can open it with:

```bash
heroku open
```

You also can run the console on Heroku using:

```bash
heroku console --app your-app-name
```

10. Heroku doesn't allow saving images or documents in its servers, so it's necessary to setup a permanent storage space.

See [our S3 guide](https://github.com/consuldemocracy/consuldemocracy/blob/docs-2.5/docs/en/installation/using-aws-s3-as-storage.md) for more details about configuring ActiveStorage with S3.

### Configure Twilio Sendgrid

Add the Twilio SendGrid add-on in Heroku. This will create a Twilio SendGrid account for the application with a username and allow you to create a password. This username and password can be stored in the application’s environment variables on Heroku:

```bash
heroku config:set SENDGRID_USERNAME=example-username SENDGRID_PASSWORD=xxxxxxxxx
```

Now add this to `config/secrets.yml`, under the `production:` section:

```yaml
  mailer_delivery_method: :smtp
  smtp_settings:
    :address: "smtp.sendgrid.net"
    :port: 587
    :domain: "heroku.com"
    :user_name: ENV["SENDGRID_USERNAME"]
    :password: ENV["SENDGRID_PASSWORD"]
    :authentication: "plain"
    :enable_starttls_auto: true
```

**Important:** Turn on one worker dyno so that emails get sent.