imclab / itp-review

for dynamic web dev class

MongoDB library - Mongoengine

Mongoengine

Adding Mongoengine to requirements.txt

Mongoengine==0.7.5
unidecode

Getting Started with MongoDB on Heroku

We will be using MongoLabs as our MongoDB host service, they have a free starter plan that we can easily associate with our Heroku accounts. When we have added the MongoLabs service we will have a connection string that includes username, password and URI to the database server.

Step 1 : Download code, setup Git, heroku create

1. Download the sample code from Github

2. Navigate to code directory in Terminal. Create Git repo

    git init
    git add .
    git commit -m "initial commit"
   

   Create virtual environment and install requirements

    virtualenv venv
    . runpip
   

3. Create a new Heroku app

    heroku create
   

Step 2 : Adding MongoLabs to your Heroku App

Heroku offers a lot of different Add-ons for your apps. Many different types of databases, image tools, cache utilities are available from 3rd party companies. Many offer a trial plan to test and develop with before you commit to a paid plan.

MongoLabs offers a 250MB MongoDB instance for free (see here) : ) How wonderful.

To install the MongoLabs

• Navigate to the code folder of your app

• In Terminal, add the MongoLab starter plan

    heroku addons:add mongolab:starter
  

This has added MongoLab to your app.

Step 3: Configure your local environment

When adding Add-ons, Heroku will add the required configuration variables for the services including username, password, urls, etc.

We must create a local configuration file to allow our local development server to connect to the MongoLabs MongoDB instance. We can grab a copy of our Heroku configuration variables and put them inside a .env file, our environment variable file.

Run the following command inside your code folder.

heroku config --shell > .env

This will create a new file, .env and it will contain a single line starting with MONGOLAB_URI and followed by a long connection url. This is the username and password for your MongoLabs account.

.env

MONGOLAB_URI=mongodb://heroku_app8083291:sadlfkweweroi........

Step 4: Add .env to .gitignore file

We want GIT to ignore the .env file, VERY IMPORTANT This keeps our environment variables safe and they won't get included inside our GIT repository (or worse, get pushed to Github).

Open your .gitignore file and add '.env' on a new line. Save the file.

.gitignore

.env

Step 5: Start your servers

. start

or

foreman start