[debjit]

I am working on a project on a Blood Donation Diary app. After completing the project I needed to deploy my project to see its behaviour in the live environment. I have limited free option. Here I am sharing how I managed to deploy to vercel with MySQL database support. Vercel is a pass provider. You can deploy non-commercial projects for free here with up to 100GB bandwidth and no storage.

To start you need the following things-

1 . Git account 
 1.a. How to add the remote repo to a local dev environment
2. Vercel Account
3. Remote enabled MySQL database access.

Here I am demonstrating how to make work with the laravel app.

Create a laravel app using composer

Code: (Select All)

composer create-project laravel/laravel laravelapp

Make Updates to or customise to it.

create these files in your root directory

Create this file

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api/index.php
.vercelignore
vercel.json

Please note there is a dot file.

Now add these codes to their files

api/index.php

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<?php

// Forward Vercel requests to normal index.php
require __DIR__ . '/../public/index.php'; 


.vercelignore

PHP Code: (Select All)

/vendor 


[font=Monaco, Consolas, Courier, monospace]vercel.json[/font]

PHP Code: (Select All)

{
    "version": 2,
    "functions": {
        "api/index.php": { "runtime": "[email protected]" }
    },
    "routes": [{
        "src": "/(.*)",
        "dest": "/api/index.php"
    }],
    "env": {
        "APP_ENV": "production",
        "APP_DEBUG": "true",
        "APP_URL": "https://yourproductionurl.com",

        "APP_CONFIG_CACHE": "/tmp/config.php",
        "APP_EVENTS_CACHE": "/tmp/events.php",
        "APP_PACKAGES_CACHE": "/tmp/packages.php",
        "APP_ROUTES_CACHE": "/tmp/routes.php",
        "APP_SERVICES_CACHE": "/tmp/services.php",
        "VIEW_COMPILED_PATH": "/tmp",

        "CACHE_DRIVER": "array",
        "LOG_CHANNEL": "stderr",
        "SESSION_DRIVER": "cookie"
    }
} 


Note: you can get all kind of info on the supported framework using this vercel PHP here

https://github.com/juicyfx/vercel-php

Now create and push to your git. (I am assuming you know how to do that. Google if you can't.)

Now you need to create a project into vercel and add a GitHub account with vercel.

Now add GitHub repository to your project here

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project > settings > git > Connected Git Repository

Now with every push, your site will auto-deploy.

Now you need to add apps environment variables

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project > settings > git > Environment Variables

From your command line inside the local dev app run

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php artisan key:generate --show

This will create a key,(and display) for your app and add these lines as env in vercel

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APP_KEY = *****

You can add your MySQL details here or just hardcoded to the app, I have found env not so reliable. So I have to hard code it. Please note hard coding to GitHub repo is not recommended and it is exposed. you can do that inside your config/database.php file.

Code: (Select All)

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=**
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=****
DB_USERNAME=**
DB_PASSWORD=**

Replace ** with their values.

You have to migrate your MySQL database ahead of time because vercel does not provide a terminal. 

So here is how I did use vercel to check on my development in a production environment.

I am using vercel for 2 days now. I will update as I learn more.

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Have you used this tutorial to get a free hosted website for yourself? please share. I will update with another free PostgreSQL service.