This post is to explain the configuration example to use heroku to deploy app with websocket-rails. The app is implemented in the previous post using standalone mode websocket server on local dev environment.

1. create heroku

Sign up for heroku and install heroku tool. Follow the heroku setup instruction in the rails tutorial.

$ heroku create
Creating gentle-tor-1752... done, stack is cedar
https://gentle-tor-1752.herokuapp.com/ | git@heroku.com:gentle-tor-1752.git

Now got gentle-tor-1752 for this entry.

2. redis setup

Because redis is used for the backend of websocket, we have to enable redis in heroku.

$ heroku addons:add redistogo                                                                                                            
Adding redistogo on gentle-tor-1752... done, v3 (free)
Use `heroku addons:docs redistogo` to view documentation.

Then, check the redis setting information from heroku web UI (app -> redistogo). You will find info on redis db, such as below.

redis://redistogo:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@greeneye.redistogo.com:12345/

Next, apply these info on the redis setting.

$ vim config/initializers/websocket_rails.rb
...
-  config.redis_options = {:host => 'localhost', :port => '6379'}
+  config.redis_options = {:host => 'greeneye.redistogo.com', :port => '12345', :user => 'redistogo', :password => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'}
...

If you don’t like write password into code, maybe you can use environment variables.

3. change websocket url

Change the websocket url specified in the code. Again, there could be better way to do this, but I put it into code simply.

$ vim app/views/chat/index.html.erb
...
-  var ws_rails = new WebSocketRails("localhost:3001/websocket");
+  var ws_rails = new WebSocketRails("aqueous-springs-2658.herokuapp.com/websocket");

* change the hostname accoring to your setting.
...

4. small changes for heroku

put sqlite dev only and add pg and rails_12fator for prod env.

+group :development do
+  # Use sqlite3 as the database for Active Record
+  gem 'sqlite3'
+end
+
+group :production do
+  gem 'pg', '0.17.1'
+  gem 'rails_12factor', '0.0.2'
+end

commit Gemfile.lock

$ bundle install
$ git add Gemfile.lock
$ git commit -am 'add Gemfile.lock'

set root path

$ vim config/routes.rb
...
root to: "chat#index"
...

5. deploy and check

$ git push heroku master
$ heroku open