Deploying Apps to Heroku with GitHub Actions

import useBaseUrl from "@docusaurus/useBaseUrl";[GitHub Actions](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/learn-github-actions/understanding-github-actions) is a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform that **allows us to automate our build, test, and deployment pipeline**. This comes in handy to use with Cloud Application platforms like Heroku to automate our deployment process to make it start when pushing to a branch or creating a pull request.> Please note that Heroku **does** have an [Integration with Github](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/github-integration#:~:text=specified%20GitHub%20repo.-,Enabling%20GitHub%20Integration,to%20configure%20automatic%20GitHub%20deploys) to work with Github Actions, but a couple months ago they had an information leak within their company. One of the measures they took to face this situation was to close this integration. They did open it afterwards but it was unstable and unreliable, so many people decided **not** to use their integration and just create it themselves. This is how to do it.## Creating the GitHub Action WorkflowFirst you need to create an empty .yml file which will contain the workflow. It should be located in the **root** of the project in _**.github/workflows**_.Let's say we want to create an action that will deploy our app to heroku when our **main** branch is updated in GitHub. Our Github Action will look like this:```yamlenv: HEROKU_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.HEROKU_API_KEY }} ... ENV_VARIABLES: ${{ secrets.ENV_VARIABLES }}name: Update Mainon: push: branches: - 'main'jobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v3 with: fetch-depth: 0 - name: Install Heroku run: | npm install -g heroku - uses: akhileshns/heroku-deploy@v3.12.12 with: heroku_api_key: ${{env.HEROKU_API_KEY}} heroku_app_name: '' heroku_email: 'email@neocoast.com' justlogin: true - name: Update Main run: | chmod +x ./script/heroku/update.sh ./script/heroku/update.sh main```> We are using Github Secrets to store our environment variables in GitHubLet's explain what is happening here. When our branch _main_ is updated on a [push](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/events-that-trigger-workflows) event, this workflow is triggered. Then we need to install the Cloud Application platform, in this case Heroku. You can choose which version you'd like to install.Afterwards we use [akhileshns/heroku-deploy](https://github.com/AkhileshNS/heroku-deploy) action to handle the connection to Heroku. This is key so that we can log in and use the commands in **heroku-cli**.You will have to use your Heroku _**email**_, and the _**heroku_api_key**_. To generate it, go to your profile in Heroku, scroll down and click on “Generate API key”.

Once this is done, we run our bash script to handle the deploy. It receives the branch you want to deploy as a parameter, in case you don't want to deploy _main_ but a different one (it happens).```bashset -e # Immediately exit if an error occurs# Precondition: Being logged in to Heroku and the app existsecho "Update Main started. You need to be logged in in Heroku."branch=$2: ${branch:= $(git branch | sed -n -e 's/^\* \(.*\)/\1/p')}email=$(heroku whoami)echo "Connect to App.."heroku git:remote -a $1echo "Connect to App.. done."{ git rev-parse --is-shallow-repository && git fetch --prune --unshallow && echo "Shallowing.. done."} || echo "Repository is Complete"echo "Git Config.."git config --global user.name $emailgit config --global user.email $emailecho "Git Config.. done."git fetchgit checkout $branchecho "Deploying code..git push -f heroku $branch:mainecho "Deploying code.. done."```First we fetch the branch and connect to our Heroku app.Then we check if the repository is shallowed and unshallow it. Heroku [requires](https://medium.com/r?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgeogig.org%2Fdocs%2Frepo%2Fpartialcloning.html%23%3A%7E%3Atext%3DA%2520shallow%2520clone%2520is%2520a%2Cof%2520the%2520repository%2520will%2520contain.) that your repository is unshallowed and has the full commit history in order to deploy.Finally we define which user is going to be responsible for doing the release. To deploy the code, ensure that you are on the desired branch and utilize the heroku-cli command. 🚀Now when we make a push to main we will see the workflow run in the Actions tab of our project.

Just as we used the push event, you could also use the **pull_request** event with these events to update or create apps in Heroku as you please. The sky’s the limit.```yamlon: pull_request: types: [opened, synchronize, reopened]```And voilà! Your project is fully synchronized with Heroku and ready to shine.