Deploying a Sails/Node.js application to OpenShift (originally from the Sails website)

deploying-to-openshift-tutorial-from-webintoit-cwramsey-and-mdunisch.md

Note: This was originally contributed by @mdunisch, @webintoit, and @cwramsey.

It may be moved back on to the Sails website at a future date; I'm just removing it until there's time to break down the "Hosting" section into individual pages. (If anyone's interested in helping w/ that, please send a PR to sails-docs!)

-mike

Deploying a Sails/Node.js application to OpenShift

To deploy to OpenShift, you'll need to make some minor modifications to your configuration: Open up config/local.js in your app folder. In here, you'll need to add the following lines.

port: process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_PORT,
host: process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_IP,

You will also need to install grunt-cli with npm i --save grunt-cli.

After doing that, create the file .openshift/action_hooks/pre_start_nodejs with the following contents. (source) This action_hook tells OpenShift's supervisor to run all 'prod' grunt tasks, before Sails lifted.

#!/bin/bash
export NODE_ENV=production

if [ -f "${OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR}"/Gruntfile.js ]; then
    (cd "${OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR}"; node_modules/grunt-cli/bin/grunt prod)
fi

Then disable Sails Grunt integration hook. To do this set the grunt property to false in .sailsrc hooks like this:

{
    "hooks": {
        "grunt": false
    }
}

NOTE:

Do not remove Gruntfile.js to disable Grunt hook, this file still using by OpenShift's supervisor.

Then create the file /supervisor_opts with the following contents. This tells OpenShift's supervisor to ignore Sails' .tmp directory for the hot reload functionality. (source)

-i .tmp

NOTE:

This deployment guide was based on Openshift's "SCALABLE" gears, with nodejs v0.10. If you're using non-scalable gear, the /supervisor_opts file will be ignored and Sails will not lift on it.

You can now git add . && git commit -a -m "your message" && git push to deploy to OpenShift.

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