Local Development

This tutorial walks you through installing a development Rack and deploying your first application to it.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, install the following:

Verify your rack

Confirm that your development Rack is running:

$ convox rack
Name      dev
Provider  local
Router    router.dev.localdev.convox.cloud
Status    running
Version   3.23.3

Deploy an example application

Clone the example

git clone https://github.com/convox-examples/rails.git
cd rails

Review the convox.yml

resources:
  database:
    type: postgres
services:
  web:
    build: .
    health: /health
    port: 3000
    resources:
      - database

This manifest defines:

A web Service that listens on port 3000 with a health check at /health
A PostgreSQL Resource named database, whose connection string is injected as the DATABASE_URL environment variable

Create the app

convox apps create rails

Start local development

convox start

The first run will take longer than usual as images are pulled and built for the first time.

Once running, you will see application logs streaming in your terminal.

View the application

In a second terminal, find the URL for your application:

$ convox services
SERVICE  DOMAIN                                PORTS
web      web.rails.dev.localdev.convox.cloud   443:3000

Open https://web.rails.dev.localdev.convox.cloud in your browser.

Your browser will show a certificate warning because the local Rack uses self-signed TLS certificates. This is expected for local development.

Make a change

Edit config/routes.rb and add the following line before the final end:

get "/test", to: proc { [200, {}, ["Hello World!"]] }

You will see the file sync in your first terminal:

convox | sync: config/routes.rb to /usr/src/app on web

Open https://web.rails.dev.localdev.convox.cloud/test to see your change.

Run a command

Use convox run to execute one-off commands against your application:

convox run web rake db:migrate

Next steps

Deploying an Application to deploy to a production Rack
Running Locally for more details on convox start