russellafisher / express-knex-postgres-heroku-setup

Knex CRUD app boilerplate using express and handlebars.

Boilerplate for a knex CRUD app

important: The commands for all these steps are at the bottom if you don't know them.

1. cd into clone && run npm install.
2. Create a local db.
3. Change knexfile.js to reflect your local db name.
4. Create a heroku app && postgresql addon.
5. put your heroku-postgresql url in the .env_example and rename file right away to .env.
6. Run knex commands to make migrations && seeds.
7. Migrate latest!
8. Don't forget to migrate to heroku.
9. Enjoy!

Steps on how I setup this CRUD project

Create Express App

• express --hbs name_of_app creates new express app in a directory called name_of_app
  • --hbs adds handlebars
  • assumes you have express-generator package installed globally (npm install -g express-generator)
• cd name_of_app && npm i
  • npm i installs all dependencies denoted by package.json

Set Up Knex

• npm i -S pg knex installs pg & knex, & adds both to the dependencies in package.json
  • in 'index.js' file, add var pg = require('pg');
  • pg is a module that lets you connect to psql; must be installed on a per project basis
  • assumes you have knex package installed globally (npm i knex -g)
• knex init creates 'knexfile.js' in root directory
• In root directory, add a folder called 'db' & create 'knex.js' inside it
  • in index.js file, add var knex = require('../db/knex');
  • refer to 'db/knex.js' in this repo for how to define your environment configurations

Initialize Git & Set Up .env File

• git init initializes git repo
• echo node_modules > .gitignore to add node modules to a .gitignore file OR if you have gitignore installed globally, use command gitignore node
• npm i -S dotenv installs dotenv module & adds to dependencies in package.json, which loads environment variables from a .env file into process.env
• touch .env in root directory to create empty .env file
  • add 1 key-value pair per line; when assigning multiple values to one key, separate with :
  • this is where we define DATABASE_URL=yourURL later
  • add require('dotenv').config(); to top of 'knexfile.js' (so that we can access the DATABASE_URL variable through process.env when we define our production environment connection). also add it to 'app.js' (if you're adding other variables that your app will refer to, so it will be available to all routes).
• echo .env >> .gitignore adds .env file to .gitignore so git doesn't track it
  • Why? Because we are going to set the DATABASE_URL variable equal to our heroku URL, which contains a password that we don't want others to see

Set Up Heroku App & Database

• createdb name_of_app creates psql database locally
• heroku apps:create name-of-app creates a heroku app (Name must start with a letter and can only contain lowercase letters, numbers, and dashes.)
• heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql --app name_of_app adds postgresql database to the app
• heroku config returns the URL
  • add URL to .env file DATABASE_URL=yourURL?ssl=true
• create a repo on github & git remote add origin ssh_of_repo to add the remote
• git add/commit/push to github
• if you want to open a psql shell 🐚 to the heroku database & run sql commands in the terminal: heroku pg:psql --app name_of_app

Migrating & Seeding

• knex migrate:make table_name to create a new migration
  • this creates a folder called 'migrations' with a new 'timestamp_table_name.js' file
  • Each time you change the table you will need to rerun this command & change the contents of the js file
• knex migrate:latest runs knex migration locally (whatever development environment is set to)
• knex seed:make seed_name to create a new seed 🌱
  • this creates a folder called 'seeds' with a new 'timestamp_seed_name.js' file
• knex seed:run to run seed the local database

If deploying to heroku,

• knex migrate:latest --env production runs knex migration locally against heroku database in the cloud
• knex seed:run --env production runs knex locally & puts seed data in heroku database
• git push heroku master to push to heroku 🎉🎈🎊