Deploying Ember CLI app to Heroku

Super-easy deploying is what I’m used to with Heroku and my small prototype apps. However, now when I now started to use Ember CLI, deploying wasn’t that easy because the instructions Google found me weren’t that clear. So I decided to write my own contribution.

1) Install Ember CLI, generate your app with eg. "ember new brand-new-app"

 

2) Add a file called Procfile to the app folder root and add there one line:

 
web: npm run start

 

3) Edit Package.json and find "scripts": { ... } block.

Add the Heroku’s port constant to the start script and also add a new “postinstall” attribute to run bower during the deployment.

  "scripts": {
    "start": "ember serve --port=${PORT}",
    "build": "ember build",
    "test": "ember test",
    "postinstall": "bower install"
  },

 

4) Continue editing Package.json and find the "devDependencies": { ... } block.

Add bower to your dependencies (eg. "bower": "1.3.12",)

Rename the block from “devDependencies” to “dependencies” to change them as dependencies you want to use while deploying.

However, you still have to have the <code>ember-cli</code> package in your devDependencies because that’s how ember detects that the app is an Ember CLI. Otherwise you’ll be told that “You have to be inside an ember-cli project in order to use the serve command”.

In the end the “devDependencies” and “dependencies” blocks look something like this:

"dependencies": {
  "bower": "1.3.12",
  "broccoli-asset-rev": "^2.0.0",
  "broccoli-ember-hbs-template-compiler": "^1.6.1",
  "connect-restreamer": "^1.0.1",
  "ember-cli": "0.1.15",
  "ember-cli-6to5": "^3.0.0",
  ...
},
"devDependencies": {
  "ember-cli": "0.1.15"
}

 

5) Commit your changes, create a Heroku app and let Heroku do the rest!
git add -A .
git commit -a -m "Heroku settings"
heroku create
git push heroku master
heroku open


Congrats, now you have your app running also on Heroku!

Thanks to Brendan Graetz for the best advice I found, this is basicly just me reformatting his blog. And of course Heroku’s Node.js docs helped too. I was using Ember CLI version 0.1.15.