Heroku Deployment - React + Node

Recently I participated in a Hackathon and I had to deploy my app on Heroku. It was very difficult to find the correct steps to deploy, watched many tutorials but most of them were outdated but finally, I found the solution to it and I would like to share it with everyone.

The below steps are that I followed to deploy my app, if you have a better way of doing it do comment.

Test app

This is a test app that I created. It asks for the input and after the user submits the form it logs the input on the server-side.

React App

Server file

Deployment

Step 1:

We need to have the client folder (React App) with the server files it should look something like this -

Step 2:

Create a build version of your React App by doing npm run build in your client(React App)folder.

After making the build version, our React part is over.

Step 3:

Now, we need to tell Heroku to use the index file of the build version during production.

In the server file add the following code:-

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') {
    app.use(express.static('client/build'))
}

Step 4:

We need to keep our port dynamic because Heroku might give us some other port

Step 5:

we need to tell Heroku to run npm install & npm run build, and for that add the following in the scripts section of your package.json on the server side

"start": "node index.js",

"heroku-postbuild": "NPM_CONFIG_PRODUCTION=false npm install --prefix client && npm run build --prefix client" # replace client with your React app folder name

Step 6:

For this step make sure you have "Hidden Items" enabled.

Delete the .git folder in the client folder.

• For the next steps make sure you have the Heroku CLI installed.
• Download: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli

Step 7:

make sure you are in the root directory,

• Login into Heroku using heroku login

• Create a Heroku App

• also make sure to add .gitignore in the server folder for folders like node_modules

• then do the following in your root directory

  git init 
  heroku git:remote -a test-app-deploy-test # replace it with yours
  git add .
  git commit -am "message"
  git push heroku master:main
  

  if done correctly then you will get this message -

Click on the link to open your app.

if you see your node app, then you are almost done.

Step 8:

Remove this from your server file.

and then push the changes again like previously.

You will be able to see your React + node App deployed

• if you are facing any issue
• or you think this can be improved do comment :)