Issues when Hosting express with typescript and react app on Heroku

Question

When hosting my app I get the following errors

2018-07-03T23:32:25.175363+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Starting process with command `npm start`
2018-07-03T23:32:28.093779+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from starting to crashed
2018-07-03T23:32:27.719911+00:00 app[web.1]: 
2018-07-03T23:32:27.719929+00:00 app[web.1]: > doombot@1.0.0 start /app
2018-07-03T23:32:27.719931+00:00 app[web.1]: > node src/server/dist/server.js
2018-07-03T23:32:27.719932+00:00 app[web.1]: 
2018-07-03T23:32:27.942441+00:00 app[web.1]: module.js:545
2018-07-03T23:32:27.942444+00:00 app[web.1]:     throw err;
2018-07-03T23:32:27.942446+00:00 app[web.1]:     ^
2018-07-03T23:32:27.942447+00:00 app[web.1]: 
2018-07-03T23:32:27.942449+00:00 app[web.1]: Error: Cannot find module '/app/src/server/dist/server.js'
2018-07-03T23:32:27.942451+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:543:15)
2018-07-03T23:32:27.942453+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Function.Module._load (module.js:470:25)
2018-07-03T23:32:27.942454+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:690:10)
2018-07-03T23:32:27.942456+00:00 app[web.1]:     at startup (bootstrap_node.js:194:16)
2018-07-03T23:32:27.942457+00:00 app[web.1]:     at bootstrap_node.js:666:3
2018-07-03T23:32:27.960851+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
2018-07-03T23:32:27.961370+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! errno 1
2018-07-03T23:32:27.965212+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! doombot@1.0.0 start: `node src/server/dist/server.js`
2018-07-03T23:32:27.966189+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! Exit status 1
2018-07-03T23:32:27.967067+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! 
2018-07-03T23:32:27.967873+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! Failed at the doombot@1.0.0 start script.
2018-07-03T23:32:27.968281+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.
2018-07-03T23:32:28.070076+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Process exited with status 1
2018-07-03T23:32:28.010680+00:00 app[web.1]: 
2018-07-03T23:32:28.010886+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
2018-07-03T23:32:28.011019+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR!     /app/.npm/_logs/2018-07-03T23_32_27_989Z-debug.log

This is my package.json file

{
  "name": "doombot",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "tsc": "tsc",
    "start": "node src/server/dist/server.js",
    "heroku-postbuild": "webpack --config webpack.prod.js; tsc -p ./tsconfig.json",
    "server": "nodemon src/server/lib/server.ts",
    "client": "webpack-dev-server --open --config webpack.dev.js",
    "dev": "concurrently \"npm run server\" \"npm run client\""
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "engines": {
    "npm": "6.0.0",
    "node": "9.9.0"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "@types/express": "^4.11.1",
    "antd": "^3.6.4",
    "app-root-path": "^2.1.0",
    "axios": "^0.18.0",
    "body-parser": "^1.18.3",
    "cors": "^2.8.4",
    "express": "^4.16.3",
    "prop-types": "^15.6.2",
    "react": "^16.4.1",
    "react-dom": "^16.4.1",
    "typescript": "2.9.1"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "babel-core": "^6.26.0",
    "babel-loader": "^7.1.4",
    "babel-plugin-import": "^1.8.0",
    "babel-preset-env": "^1.6.1",
    "babel-preset-react": "^6.24.1",
    "clean-webpack-plugin": "^0.1.19",
    "concurrently": "^3.5.1",
    "css-loader": "^0.28.11",
    "eslint": "^4.19.1",
    "eslint-config-airbnb": "^16.1.0",
    "eslint-plugin-import": "^2.11.0",
    "eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y": "^6.0.3",
    "eslint-plugin-react": "^7.7.0",
    "html-webpack-plugin": "^3.2.0",
    "nodemon": "^1.17.3",
    "style-loader": "^0.20.3",
    "uglifyjs-webpack-plugin": "^1.2.7",
    "webpack": "^4.5.0",
    "webpack-cli": "^2.0.14",
    "webpack-dev-server": "^3.1.3",
    "webpack-merge": "^4.1.3"
  }
}

webpack.common.js

const path = require('path');
const CleanWebpackPlugin = require('clean-webpack-plugin');
const HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin');

module.exports = {
  entry: './src/client/index.js',
  plugins: [new CleanWebpackPlugin(['build']), new HtmlWebpackPlugin()],
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.js$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        use: {
          loader: 'babel-loader'
        }
      },
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        use: ['style-loader', 'css-loader']
      }
    ]
  },
  output: {
    filename: 'bundle.js',
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'build')
  }
};

webpack.dev.js

const merge = require('webpack-merge');
const common = require('./webpack.common.js');
const path = require('path');

module.exports = merge(common, {
  mode: 'development',
  devtool: 'inline-source-map',
  devServer: {
    contentBase: './build',
    port: 3000,
    open: true,
    proxy: {
      '/api': 'http://localhost:4040'
    }
  }
});

webpack.prod.js

const webpack = require('webpack');
const merge = require('webpack-merge');
const common = require('./webpack.common.js');
const UglifyJSPlugin = require('uglifyjs-webpack-plugin');
const path = require('path');

module.exports = merge(common, {
  mode: 'production',
  devtool: 'source-map',
  plugins: [
    new UglifyJSPlugin({
      sourceMap: true
    }),
    new webpack.DefinePlugin({
      'process.env.NODE_ENV': JSON.stringify('production')
    })
  ]
});

and my tsconfig file

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "module": "commonjs",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "pretty": true,
    "sourceMap": true,
    "target": "es6",
    "outDir": "./src/server/dist", // creates the dist directory & places compiles files here
    "baseUrl": "./src/server/lib"
  },
  "include": [
    "./src/server/lib/**/*.ts" // specifies that we should include all ts files within lib
  ],
  "exclude": ["node_modules"]
}

If I understand correctly, this is not appearing due to it not building properly. My question is how can I build and run my app the correct way?

If you would like to see my entire code, you can find it here - https://github.com/albertogodinez/dooms-data

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 04 '18 at 19:47

You're missing quite a few steps. Let's backtrack a bit.

You're telling Heroku that to start your app, it should run node src/server/dist/server.js (because you specify that as the start script in your package.json). However, server.js does not exist on Heroku, there's only server.ts (i.e. the TypeScript file).
Thus, you'll have to tell Heroku to convert your TypeScript file to Javascript - right now, you're only telling it to build your client (i.e. through webpack in the heroku-postbuild script). To fix this, you can change that script to "webpack --mode production; tsc --project=tsconfig.json",
However, that won't work either as the TypeScript compiler is not installed on Heroku. Therefore, be sure to add typescript to your dependencies (note that IIRC, Heroku does not install devDependencies, so either make it a regular dependency or tell Heroku to install devDependencies as well.
Even if your server then runs correctly, it only serves your API. If you also want your client to be reachable, you have to tell Express to serve it. You could do that something like this:

.

app.use(
  express.static(
    path.join(__dirname, '../../compiled_frontend'),
    { index: false },
  ),
);

That, I think, should do the trick, but obviously more could be wrong. Coincidentally, I'm working on an app with a very similar setup, and it's open source - so feel free to give it a look if you need inspiration.

Thank you so much. This has gotten me to the point where I can successfully build, but now as you mentioned, I'm running into the problem where React isn't showing up. i've tried a number of things so far, but no luck. — alberto_g, Jul 05 '18 at 04:07
I have the following set up in my server.ts file `app.use(express.static(path.join(appRoot + '/build'), { index: false })); app.get('*', function(request, response) { response.sendFile(appRoot + '/build/index.html'); }); app.listen(port, function() { console.log('Express server listening on port ' + port); }); ` and when I output the path I am getting the correct path. I've done some changes to the webpacks as well and have edited my original post to reflect that. Thanks again for the help! — alberto_g, Jul 05 '18 at 04:09

Issues when Hosting express with typescript and react app on Heroku

1 Answers1

Linked