How to write Procfile for node.js heroku deployment using bin/www?

Question

I am trying to deploy a Heroku app, and I believe the procfile may be the reason my app is not deploying. I've tried multiple solutions including:

web: node ./bin/www web: npm start

There may be another reason my app is not working, but I want to make sure my Procfile is set up correctly

Solution 1

You should do:

web: ./bin/www npm start

This is what fixed it for me!

Solution 2

This is what I have:

1. A file in the root directory of the project called Procfile (no file extension)
2. Inside the file, the first line reads web: bin/web
3. In the bin directory which is also located in the rood directory of the project, I have a file called web and inside I have node ./bin/www (well I have more, but lets keep it simple).
4. there is another file in the bin directory called www where I have the code to start the node server.
5. Both files in the bin directory needs to be executable, and you can set this by doing chmod +x file_name

Explanation for the Procfile

As mentioned above, in the Procfile I have this line: web: bin/web where

1. web: - is the name of the process, and needs to be web for Heroku to like you :)
2. bin/web - is the path to your file

I hope this helps :)

Comments

[Brian Ly]

Hey thanks for your help. unfortunately my app is still not deploying, but at least I know the Procfile is set up correctly now. This is message I got in the logs: 2016-02-26T23:37:33.319462+00:00 heroku[router]: at=error code=H10 desc="App crashed" method=GET path="/" host=nodeguestbook.herokuapp.com request_id=9bb42708-6af6-4762-80cb-d7a770c733de fwd="97.90.145.90" dyno= connect= service= status=503 bytes=

[David Gatti]

Well yes, your app is starting, but there must be something wrong in your code. Go to the Deploy section of your app on Heroku, Scroll down and hit the manual deploy, you will get a console showing everything that is happening. There you'll see what is actually wrong.

[Brian Ly]

Alright cool thanks again for all your help! Im looking through the logs now hopefully i can figure out what it means.