I recently developed a web app locally, with a React frontend that interacts via proxy with a Node.js backend that interacts with MongoDB Atlas. Everything works locally, and I am ready to actually deploy the web app for public use.
How does hosting work with a full stack web application? Do I host the entire web app in the same place (e.g. S3 bucket), or should the backend and frontend be deployed separately? I have never done this before, so I appreciate any help I can get.
Yes, you can have two different servers for frontend and backend.
You can use theHeroku platform to deploy your backend app, and Mlab to provision a Mongo database. These platforms has free tiers where you can experiment and learn about deployments and clouds.
Once you are comfortable with these then you can move to Elastic Bean Stalk on AWS to provision servers and also database.
Now mlab is not available as it is already been acquired by mongoDB only, so I would recommend you to create the database on Atlas cluster which also offers a free tier.
Rather than using the Heroku, I would suggest you to use MongoDB stitch which is also the backend as a service. If you will use stitch then you can also seek for support from mongoDB people but in case you will use heroku then you will not receive any support from them.
You can refer to the documentation of stitch for more information https://docs.mongodb.com/stitch/. This has complete guidance how you can deploy your app using stich and can use mongodb database.
However if you need more help, please ping me anytime.
Related
I'm currently building a website that I would like to privately host so it can only be used internally. My goal is to store file uploads into a google cloud bucket then document certain things into a cloud sql db for filtering later on.
I've been able to store and pull my files from a bucket and I was also able to set up my database in cloud sql however I'm not totally sure how to send SQL query's to my database from my website. I've tried going through the documentation but I'm a bit lost as to what I need. So if anyone knows what I should be looking at that would be a lot of help. Anything like a guide on the google documentation, because I'm not sure which I need to follow or anything.
Additional information
Currently my website is hosted locally because I haven't decided on a
website hosting service yet any recommendations would be helpful.
I was using a postgres database as practice for creating endpoints and developing my database
structure.
I am using a PERN stack so postgres, express, react and node.js
If there's anything else you would like specified I'm more then happy to provide any additional information.
Update:
I was able to connect my postgres db to cloudsql. I would explain how but this video does a great job of it.
How to connect psql db to cloud sql
However I'm running into an issue when I try to connect using an SSL connection. I have the files my only issue is I don't know where to store these files.
The general recommendation is to use the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy to connect to your Cloud SQL instance.
Basically you'd run the proxy wherever you're running your webapp and then have your webapp connect to the proxy as if it were a local database.
You'll start the proxy like this:
./cloudsql_auth_proxy -instances=<INSTANCE_CONNCECTION_NAME>=tcp:5432
That will start a listener on 5432 on localhost that you can connect your webapp to.
Alternatively, you could use Authorized Networks to allow-list the IP address of the machine where your app runs.
Check out the docs here: https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/postgres/connect-overview.
The Problem
I am student assigned to a project to create a rudimentary social media app. We are planning to use Flutter to build the app and we are going to use MongoDB and Express for the database and API respectively. The goal is to be able to use continuous integration for our project through Fastlane and GitLab.
Initially, I thought to put the API and Flutter in separate Docker containers and to host the database on my desktop, but I realize that might not be the best solution.
The Question(s)
How should we setup the database and the server that we all have access to the same data in a database? Basically, how should we best set up our project environment to work as team, in terms of:
hosting the database?
setting up Express and Flutter for continuous integration?
If you are using MongoDB just set up a cluster on Atlas it's free as long as it's a relatively small application (up to 500MB). After you sign up, you will create a cluster, and then Atlas will give you instructions on how to connect to that cluster using node.js.
Basically all you do is throw in the link to your cluster with your configured password in your database connection link. This is all in the cloud so you can access it from anywhere after you whitelist the IP's that will be accessing it remotely. (alternatively you can whitelist all IP's which is the easier way of doing things it's just A LOT less secure.) but it's an okay option for a school project.
You can then use Heroku to host your app which allows for a custom server setup like you will have with Express.
You will need to use dotenv for heroku as well as securing your database link and password, so read up on that as well.
I build a web based mobile app (using react), which I'm hosting as an Azure Web app. This website is connected to a node server, which I'm hosting using a azure virtual machine (I don't know if this is the best approach, maybe I should host this as a webapp instead of VM ?).
I'm still new to this strategie of developing a web based mobile app and connecting it to a hosted backend in the cloud so I apologize if this is a trivial question.
I'm using websockets to connect my frontend to the node server and then I consume messages. I don't have a database it is a simple application.
The steps I'm doing to run the app are:
I connect to the Azure VM from my laptop with ssh
run my server using node server.js
When the server is runing, I can refresh my website and everything works fine
Now, the problem is that I want the node server to run all the time. However, I noticed that the server stops running when I deconnect (ssh) my laptop from the virtual machine. So I find myself doing these steps (connecting to the VM with ssh and running the server manually) each time I want to use the app.
Is there a way to do this so that the node server runs all the time without stoping? Also since I'm new to this, is this the right way to deploy frontend and backend? I assume I can't deploy both frontend and backend in the same Azure webapp or am I wrong?
(Since part of your question is around "Is there a better way?", I would answer that instead of fixing the issue in your current VM hosting :)).
To take full advantage of cloud for your applications, PaaS is always preferred over IaaS. In this case, unless you have any specific reason, you should deploy your backend Node app in another App Service (aka Web App). Or you can consider Azure Function also if your node app has a small set of APIs, but it will require code update. Both support multiple platforms including node.js. Since you mentioned you are leveraging Web App for your react mobile app, so I hope you are already bit familiar with it. Also since Azure Function would require code change, so Web App is preferred this case.
Note: I omitted other solutions like AKS, Service Fabric etc. for now, since currently we are talking about the problem of deploying only a single app, for which those will be overkill at this moment.
Also, to your point
I assume I can't deploy both frontend and backend in the same Azure webapp or am I wrong?
Yes technically you can, depending on your scenario by "bundling" into a single app if both are in same platform (like Node in this case). Though whether one should do that would be an opinionated answer. But even if you keep those separate, you can still leverage single App Service Plan for cost saving. So keeping separate like you have now is what I would suggest to maintain "separation of concern".
I am making my first mobile app using Xamarin.Forms and FreshMVVM as the architecture and I want this app to get info off my SQL database (which is located in azure) by calling an API Rest. I already know how to develop an Api, and all the SQL and Azure related stuff, as well as how to get info from my API.
But what I don't know is how to access this API when the project in which is created is not executed, in other words, I don't know how to make my API Rest accessible all the time, so the App can access to it whenever is needed.
How do you do this?
Thank you all for your time, hope you have a good day.
You need to publish the API to a web host. Azure App Services. AWS. Digital Ocean VM running a web server. Possibly GoDaddy, though I have never used them. Your own server.
I'm trying to run a MongoDB (using NodeJS and Express) on the Azure Server as a server side part of my ionic app.
Once placed on Azure I'd like to access it with my Ionic App using CRUD operations.
What steps do I go through after acquiring a Azure Portal account? Do I take Mobile Services or a simple Web Api?
Is there something specific that I need to add to the NodeJS server?
Generally, the app using Node and MongoDB as the backend for mobile client hosted on Azure App Service, such as WebApps, Mobile Apps (recommended).
Based on my understanding, I think there are some documents that may be helpful for you, please see them below.
For Web Apps, you can refer to the tutorial Get started with Node.js web apps in Azure App Service.
For Mobile Apps, I think your ionic app was based on cordova, there is a tutorial for getting started with cordova Create an Apache Cordova app. And Two related blogs shown a sample of Node + MongoDB on Azure for mobile, please see below.
Exposing MongoDB collections on the node.js backend
Querying MongoDB collections via the Azure Mobile Service node.js backend
To deploy the app to Azure App Service, you can try to publish it via FTP, git, or IDE like VS, please see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/web-sites-deploy/.
Hope it helps. Any concern, please feel free to let me know.