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Create a Rails Application

This guide covers how to deploy a Ruby on Rails application with Deploio. It assumes you have a basic understanding of Ruby on Rails and Git.

Prerequisites​

  • This quick start guide assumes you have installed nctl on your laptop. If not, please go through the instructions here.
  • You should also have an organization and project created, where you will create the application. If you haven't done this yet, please follow the instructions here.
  • This example also presumes that you are using a public repository. Should you need to set up access to a private repository, you will need to create an SSH key for security. See more details here.
  • A locally running version of Ruby, Rubygems, Bundler, and Rails

Use an Existing Rails Application or Create a New One​

In case you don't have a Rails application yet, you can create one using the Rails CLI. We recommend following the official Rails guide to create a new Rails application. We also have a basic Rails app in our examples repository, which you can also choose as a starting point.

warning

Right now, Deploio does not support SQLite databases. You will need to use PostgreSQL or MySQL if you wish to persist data. This can be configured by passing the --database flag to the rails new command with either postgresql or mysql.

After configuring your Rails application and attaching a database, you can proceed to deploy it with Deploio. Add the x86_64-linux and ruby platforms to your Gemfile, to ensure that the correct gems are installed.

cd myapp
bundle lock --add-platform x86_64-linux --add-platform ruby

Use Git to Store Your Application​

Deploio requires your application to be available online in a Git repository, so that it can be cloned and deployed by the platform. You can use any Git repository hosting service, such as GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. We describe the process of setting up a Git repository here. For demonstration purposes, we will use our sample Rails application hosted on GitHub.

Create a Deploio Application​

To create an application on Deploio, we can use the nctl create application command:

nctl create application rails \
  --git-url=https://github.com/ninech/deploio-examples \
  --git-sub-path=ruby/rails-basic \
  --env="SECRET_KEY_BASE=$(rails secret)"

Replace the name rails with any app name best suited for your project.

note

This requires the Rails CLI to be installed for the SECRET_KEY_BASE. If you don't have it, any long random string will do (127+ chars), e.g. openssl rand -hex 64 or head -c 64 /dev/urandom | xxd -p -c 0.

When you create an application, the Git repository is cloned and Deploio will attempt to detect the application type and select the appropriate buildpack. In this case, the Heroku Ruby buildpack will be used. The buildpack will then attempt to detect the desired ruby version from the Gemfile.lock in the app source. The full behavior of the buildpack is documented here.

note

If your application requires Node.js either for the build or runtime, a package.json file must be present at the root of the repository for the Node.js runtime to be installed.

Next Steps​

The app should be running by now. However, if you are migrating an existing application or just created a new one that requires a database, chances are high that the current setup will not work. In this case, we will need to set up a database, which is described in the next step.

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