Heroku Node Update
I’ve been using Node on Heroku to test the basics. Here’s what you need to know:
- The workflow is exactly the same as with Ruby apps
- There’s no package management support — libraries must be stored inside your Git repository
- There’s a 30 second connection timeout. There’s some concern that this might impact apps that rely on WebSockets
The Heroku team have been proactive at answering questions and guiding people through the process of installing and managing Node apps — if enough people want the 30 second limit dropped it sounds like Heroku might simply adapt their architecture to suit our requirements (given time).
Apps
The beta is currently closed, but there are apps out there that demonstrate what real Heroku Node apps look like:
- heroku-express is an example app that uses a Rake task to manage importing Express into your repository
- SousaBall uses postgres
About Heroku
If you haven’t used Heroku before, it’s a hosting service based around Git. That means they host a Git repository that automatically deploys when you git push to it. A typical session looks like this:
$ git commit -m 'Bug fixes to close #31, #29'
$ git push heroku master
Counting objects: 267, done.
Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (176/176), done.
Writing objects: 100% (262/262), 122.67 KiB, done.
Total 262 (delta 11), reused 0 (delta 0)
-----> Heroku receiving push
-----> Node app detected
Developers like Heroku because it makes sysadmin tasks much simpler. It can also scale as your requirements change. It could be a big thing for server-side JavaScript adoption because apps can be run for free, which is more attractive for newcomers than setting up a server that can run Node.
