Overview
I’ve known Heroku for a long time, but never have a try to build with it. This time, I found a beautiful file indexer, h5ai, that requires PHP 5.5+, and Heroku is a perfect platform to build and host it.
PHP on Heroku
There’s a tutorial on Heroku: Getting Started on Heroku with PHP. You’d better follow this guide to have a feeling on the build procedures of PHP on Heroku.
Since I do not have PHP installed on my PC, I used c9.io to set up all the things on the cloud with a Ubuntu workspace (Cloud 9 already set all the tools you’ll need, include Heroku CLI tools, PHP, Git, composer…).
Prepare the app
OK, now let’s start with following the tutorial from Heroku. Clone the sample application, and then we’ll update it to h5ai.
git clone https://github.com/heroku/php-getting-started.gitcd php-getting-started
Deploy the app
Create an app on Heroku that used to receive the source codes, all done using Heroku CLI.
First, you need to login with Heroku account by heroku login
, and create a Heroku app by heroku create
. You can set the app name by pass the APP-NAME
parameter, or Heroku will give you a random app name (in the following case whispering-beyond-31148
).
$ heroku login$ heroku create APP-NAMECreating app... done, ⬢ whispering-beyond-31148https://whispering-beyond-31148.herokuapp.com/ | https://git.heroku.com/whispering-beyond-31148.git
Now, we can push the sample codes to Heroku:
$ git push heroku masterCounting objects: 178, done.Delta compression using up to 8 threads.Compressing objects: 100% (96/96), done.Writing objects: 100% (178/178), 49.02 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.Total 178 (delta 68), reused 175 (delta 68)remote: Compressing source files... done.remote: Building source:remote: remote: -----> PHP app detectedremote: -----> Bootstrapping...remote: -----> Installing platform packages...remote: NOTICE: No runtime required in composer.json; requirementsremote: from dependencies in composer.lock will be used for selectionremote: - php (7.1.3)remote: - apache (2.4.20)remote: - nginx (1.8.1)remote: -----> Installing dependencies...remote: Composer version 1.4.1 2017-03-10 09:29:45remote: Loading composer repositories with package informationremote: Installing dependencies from lock fileremote: Package operations: 12 installs, 0 updates, 0 removalsremote: - Installing psr/log (1.0.2): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing monolog/monolog (1.22.1): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing symfony/routing (v3.2.7): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing symfony/polyfill-mbstring (v1.3.0): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing symfony/http-foundation (v3.2.7): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing symfony/event-dispatcher (v3.2.7): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing symfony/debug (v3.2.7): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing symfony/http-kernel (v3.2.7): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing pimple/pimple (v3.0.2): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing silex/silex (v2.0.4): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing twig/twig (v2.3.0): Downloading (100%)remote: - Installing symfony/twig-bridge (v3.2.7): Downloading (100%)remote: Generating optimized autoload filesremote: -----> Preparing runtime environment...remote: -----> Checking for additional extensions to install...remote: -----> Discovering process typesremote: Procfile declares types -> webremote: remote: -----> Compressing...remote: Done: 14.8Mremote: -----> Launching...remote: Released v3remote: https://whispering-beyond-31148.herokuapp.com/ deployed to Herokuremote: remote: Verifying deploy... done.To https://git.heroku.com/whispering-beyond-31148.git * [new branch] master -> master
Now, you can visit the sample app now with above url (https://whispering-beyond-31148.herokuapp.com/). There is a working demo: https://gsphpjon.herokuapp.com/.
Setup h5ai
Well, we have a working PHP app now. The next step is to set up the h5ai file indexer.
Procfile and h5ai source
In the sample app, there is a Procfile
text file that declares what command should be executed to start the app on Heroku. It looks like this:
web: vendor/bin/heroku-php-apache2 web/
This declares a single process type,
web
, and the command needed to run it. The nameweb:
is important here. It declares that this process type will be attached to the HTTP routing stack of Heroku, and receive web traffic when deployed.
Procfiles can contain additional process types. For example, you might declare one for a background worker process that processes items off of a queue.
So, the web app is started from the web/
folder (treat it as the root folder for h5ai), we’ll replace those files in the web/
folder with h5ai.
Delete all files in the web/
folder except the .htaccess
. Then download the h5ai, extract the _h5ai/
folder into web/
. The file structure should look like this:
web ├─ _h5ai ├─ your files ├─ and folders └─ .htaccess
In this way, h5ai will manage all directories (and files) in and below web/
that don’t have an index (index.html
/ index.php
) file.
Rewrite the .htaccess
file, make h5ai as the index page:
RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteRule ^ /_h5ai/public/index.php [QSA,L]DirectoryIndex index.html index.php /_h5ai/public/index.php
Declare app dependencies
In the sample app, there already has a composer.json
file, add more dependencies required by h5ai in this file:
{ "require" : { "silex/silex": "^1.3", "monolog/monolog": "^1.4", "twig/twig": "^1.8", "symfony/twig-bridge": "^2", "ext-gd": "^0.0.0", "ext-exif": "^0.0.0" }, "require-dev": { "heroku/heroku-buildpack-php": "*" }}
When an app is deployed, Heroku reads this file and installs the appropriate dependencies into the
vendor
directory.
Run the following command to install the dependencies:
$ composer update
It will update the composer.lock
as well. You should always check composer.json
and composer.lock
into the git repository.
Push local changes
In this step, you can add more files or folders in the web/
folder. Then, deploy the changes to Heroku with Git:
$ git add.$ git commit -m "update files"$ git push heroku master
Working with git repo locally
After these setups, we can add or delete files (folder) just within the git repo locally. Clone the git repo from Heroku to your local computer, add or delete files in the web/
folder, then push back to Heroku with git push heroku master
as normal git operation flow.
The whole file structure for this PHP app looks like this:
your git repo folder ├─ .gitignore ├─ composer.json ├─ composer.lock ├─ Procfile └─ web ├─ _h5ai ├─ your files ├─ and folders ├─ more folder or files └─ .htaccess
More settings on h5ai can config the _h5ai/private/conf/options.json
file.
For Heroku app, you can also bind a custom domain for the app, just configure it on Heroku’s website.
林宏
Frank Lin
Hey, there! This is Frank Lin (@flinhong), one of the 1.41 billion . This 'inDev. Journal' site holds the exploration of my quirky thoughts and random adventures through life. Hope you enjoy reading and perusing my posts.