This guide will show you how to deploy a Grails application to Heroku and bind it to the Postgres database service.
- Java, Maven, Git, and the Heroku client (as described in the basic Java quickstart)
- An installed version of Postgres to test locally
- An installed version of Grails 1.3.7 or 2.0.0 (this guide assumes 2.0.0)
If you don't already have a Grails app, you can create one quickly following the standard Grails Quick Start or clone this sample from github:
:::term
$ git clone git://github.com/heroku/devcenter-grails.git
Heroku automatically provisions a small database when you create a Grails application and sets the DATABASE_URL environment variable to a URL of the format
postgres://user:password@hostname/path
You can also provision a larger database service yourself using the heroku addons command. Either way, the database connection information will be stored in the DATABASE_URL variable.
Configure your app to use this database by changing the production database configuration in grails-app/conf/DataSource.groovy to this:
:::groovy
production {
dataSource {
dbCreate = "update"
driverClassName = "org.postgresql.Driver"
dialect = org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect
uri = new URI(System.env.DATABASE_URL?:"postgres://test:test@localhost/test")
url = "jdbc:postgresql://"+uri.host+uri.path
username = uri.userInfo.split(":")[0]
password = uri.userInfo.split(":")[1]
}
}
Edit grails-app/conf/BuildConfig.groovy to add the postgres JDBC driver as a dependency and to enable Maven Central and the local Maven cache as repositories. Your BuildConfig.groovy should look like this:
:::groovy
grails.project.class.dir = "target/classes"
grails.project.test.class.dir = "target/test-classes"
grails.project.test.reports.dir = "target/test-reports"
grails.project.target.level = 1.6
grails.project.source.level = 1.6
//grails.project.war.file = "target/${appName}-${appVersion}.war"
grails.project.dependency.resolution = {
// inherit Grails' default dependencies
inherits("global") {
// uncomment to disable ehcache
// excludes 'ehcache'
}
log "warn" // log level of Ivy resolver, either 'error', 'warn', 'info', 'debug' or 'verbose'
checksums true // Whether to verify checksums on resolve
repositories {
inherits true // Whether to inherit repository definitions from plugins
grailsPlugins()
grailsHome()
grailsCentral()
mavenCentral()
// uncomment the below to enable remote dependency resolution
// from public Maven repositories
mavenLocal()
//mavenCentral()
//mavenRepo "http://snapshots.repository.codehaus.org"
//mavenRepo "http://repository.codehaus.org"
//mavenRepo "http://download.java.net/maven/2/"
//mavenRepo "http://repository.jboss.com/maven2/"
}
dependencies {
// specify dependencies here under either 'build', 'compile', 'runtime', 'test' or 'provided' scopes eg.
// runtime 'mysql:mysql-connector-java:5.1.13'
runtime 'postgresql:postgresql:8.4-702.jdbc3'
}
}
Create a .gitignore file tailored for Grails to prevent generated files from being checked in:
*.iws
*Db.properties
*Db.script
.settings
.classpath
.project
eclipse
stacktrace.log
target
/plugins
/web-app/plugins
/web-app/WEB-INF/classes
web-app/WEB-INF/tld/c.tld
web-app/WEB-INF/tld/fmt.tld
Check your app into Git:
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$ git init
$ git add .
$ git commit -m init
Create the app on the Cedar stack
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$ heroku create --stack cedar
You declare how you want your application executed in Procfile in the project root. Create this file with a single line:
:::term
web: java $JAVA_OPTS -jar server/jetty-runner.jar --port $PORT target/*.war
Running Grails on the Cedar stack automatically generates the Procfile above. But you can take full control of how your app is executed by defining your own Procfile.
:::term
$ git push heroku master
Counting objects: 110, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (80/80), done.
Writing objects: 100% (110/110), 163.34 KiB, done.
Total 110 (delta 17), reused 110 (delta 17)
-----> Heroku receiving push
-----> Fetching custom buildpack... done
-----> Grails app detected
-----> Grails 2.0.0 app detected
-----> Installing Grails 2.0.0.....
-----> Done
-----> Executing grails -plain-output -Divy.default.ivy.user.dir=/app/tmp/repo.git/.cache war
|Loading Grails 2.0.0
|Configuring classpath
|Downloading: ivy-1.0.1.RELEASE.xml
...
|Done creating WAR target/grails20Test-0.1.war
-----> No server directory found. Adding jetty-runner 7.5.4.v20111024 automatically.
-----> Discovering process types
Procfile declares types -> (none)
Default types for Grails -> web
-----> Compiled slug size is 31.1MB
-----> Launching... done, v6
http://young-summer-1535.herokuapp.com deployed to Heroku
Congratulations! Your Grails app is now up and running on Heroku. Open it in your browser with:
:::term
$ heroku open
Normally you run your Grails apps locally with grails run-app. This works great for quick, iterative development, and is fine to use when developing for Heroku. However, it is often useful to run the app using the same configuration as the server.
As you might have noticed from the build output above. Heroku added Jetty as the web server to run your app, but you don't have to let Heroku do this. Simply download the jetty-runner jar yourself and add it to your project:
$ mkdir server
$ curl http://repo2.maven.org/maven2/org/mortbay/jetty/jetty-runner/7.5.4.v20111024/jetty-runner-7.5.4.v20111024.jar > server/jetty-runner.jar
You can put any server configuration in the server directory. For example, you can put a complete Tomcat distribution there.
To run your app in the same configuration as Heroku, you must run a local Postgres database. It's a common source of issues to use different databases in development and production. Set up a database on your Postgres instance and set the DATABASE_URL variable in your environment:
$ export DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@localhost/dbname
Build the war file:
$ grails war
Execute jetty runner:
$ java -jar server/jetty-runner.jar target/*.war
2012-01-23 15:22:30.792:INFO:omjr.Runner:Runner
2012-01-23 15:22:30.793:WARN:omjr.Runner:No tx manager found
2012-01-23 15:22:30.820:INFO:omjr.Runner:Deploying file:/Users/test/dev/devcenter-grails/target/grails20Test-0.1.war @ /[o.e.j.w.WebAppContext{/,null},file:/Users/test/dev/devcenter-grails/target/grails20Test-0.1.war]
2012-01-23 15:22:30.836:INFO:oejs.Server:jetty-7.x.y-SNAPSHOT
2012-01-23 15:22:30.865:INFO:oejw.WebInfConfiguration:Extract jar:file:/Users/test/dev/devcenter-grails/target/grails20Test-0.1.war!/ to /private/var/folders/b2/wfscp_952tn6gd6dhssbr7q00000gn/T/jetty-0.0.0.0-8080-grails20Test-0.1.war-_-any-/webapp
2012-01-23 15:22:32.683:INFO:oejpw.PlusConfiguration:No Transaction manager found - if your webapp requires one, please configure one.
2012-01-23 15:22:33.478:INFO:/:Initializing Spring root WebApplicationContext
2012-01-23 15:22:37.780:INFO:oejsh.ContextHandler:started o.e.j.w.WebAppContext{/,file:/private/var/folders/b2/wfscp_952tn6gd6dhssbr7q00000gn/T/jetty-0.0.0.0-8080-grails20Test-0.1.war-_-any-/webapp/},file:/Users/test/dev/devcenter-grails/target/grails20Test-0.1.war
2012-01-23 15:22:37.849:INFO:/:Initializing Spring FrameworkServlet 'grails'
2012-01-23 15:22:37.870:INFO:oejs.AbstractConnector:Started [email protected]:8080 STARTING
Your app is now up on http://localhost:8080.
Of course you don't have to use Jetty at all. As you have seen, you are in full control of what web server you use for your app and how it is launched by Heroku. This gives you the benefit of being able to control your production runtime in detail and being able to run exactly the same configuration in development and production.
The Grails Heroku plugin provides a set of simple commands to set up your Grails app with Heroku add-on services like Postgres, Memcached, Redis, MongoDB from MongoLabs or MongoHQ and RabbitMQ.
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