Chapter 15: Deploying Your Application

This chapter will explain how to deploy your backend and frontend to a server. Successful deployment is a key part of the software development process, and it is important to learn how a modern deployment process works. There are a variety of cloud servers or PaaS (short for Platform-as-a-Service) providers available, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), DigitalOcean, and Microsoft Azure. In this book, we are using Heroku and AWS, which support multiple programming languages that are used in web development. We will also show you how to use Docker containers in deployment.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Deploying the backend
• Deploying the frontend
• Using Docker containers

Technical requirements

The Spring Boot application that we created in Chapter 5, Securing and Testing Your Backend is required (it is available on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Full-Stack-Development-with-Spring-Boot-and-React/tree/main/Chapter05), as is the React app that we used in Chapter 13, Testing Your Frontend (it is available on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Full-Stack-Development-with-Spring-Boot-and-React/tree/main/Chapter13).

Docker installation is necessary, and the following GitHub link will also be required: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Full-Stack-Development-with-Spring-Boot-and-React/tree/main/Chapter15.

Deploying the backend

If you are going to use your own server, the easiest way to deploy the Spring Boot application is to use an executable Java ARchive (JAR) file. If you use Maven, an executable JAR file can be created using the Spring Boot Maven plugin and adding the following lines of code to your pom.xml file:

 <plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <executable>true</executable>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

Next, we have to build our project using the mvn clean install command. You can run a custom maven command in the Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) by right-clicking Project in the project explorer, selecting Run as | Maven Build…, and typing clean install in the Goals...

Deploying the frontend

You can deploy your frontend to Heroku as well, but we will now use AWS Amplify for the deployment.

First, we have to change our REST API URL. Open your frontend project with Visual Studio Code (VS Code) and open the constants.js file in the editor. Change the SERVER_URL constant to match your backend's URL, as follows, and save the changes:

export const SERVER_URL = 'https://carbackend.herokuapp.com/';

Then, push your code to GitHub and follow the next steps:

1. Log in to the Amplify console (https://console.aws.amazon.com/amplify/home).
2. Press the Get started button under Amplify Hosting, as illustrated in the following screenshot:

Figure 15.14 – Amplify Hosting

3. Select GitHub and press the Continue button, as illustrated in the following screenshot. First, you have to link your GitHub account to Amplify:

Figure 15.15 – GitHub repository

4. Next, select...

Using Docker containers

Docker is a container platform that makes software development, deployment, and shipping easier. Containers are lightweight and executable software packages that include everything that is needed to run software. In this section, we are creating a container from our Spring Boot backend, as follows:

1. Install Docker on your workstation. You can find the installation packages at https://www.docker.com/get-docker. There are installation packages for multiple platforms, and if you have a Windows operating system, you can go through the installation wizard using the default settings. After the installation, you can check the current version by typing the following command in the terminal:

   heroku --version

2. First, we have to create an executable JAR file from our Spring Boot application, just as we did at the beginning of this chapter. Right-click your project in the project explorer and select Run as | Maven build... from the menu. Select your project in...

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to deploy the Spring Boot application. We went through the different deployment options for the Spring Boot application and deployed the application to Heroku. Next, we deployed our React frontend using AWS Amplify. Finally, we used Docker to create containers from our Spring Boot application and the MariaDB database.

In the next chapter, we will cover some more technologies and best practices that you should explore.

Questions

1. How should you create a Spring Boot executable JAR file?
2. How should you deploy a Spring Boot application to Heroku?
3. How should you deploy a React app using AWS Amplify?
4. What is Docker?
5. How should you create a Spring Boot application container?
6. How should you create a MariaDB container?

Further reading

Packt Publishing has other great resources available for learning about React, Spring Boot, and Docker. A couple of them are listed here:

• Mastering Docker, by Russ McKendrick (https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/cloud_and_networking/9781839216572/1)
• Docker for Developers, by Russ McKendrick and Scott Gallagher (https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/cloud_and_networking/9781789536058/1)