Ruby function to create a new Heroku app with the Heroku Platform API

create_heroku_app.rb

# Function to create a new Heroku app instance using the ruby Heroku Platform API
#
# Documentation:
# https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/setting-up-apps-using-the-heroku-platform-api
# https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/platform-api-reference#app-setup
# https://github.com/heroku/platform-api
# https://heroku.github.io/platform-api
#
# Add the gem 'platform-api'
require "platform-api"

def create_heroku_app(app_name:, heroku_org:, branch:, github_account:, github_repo:, config_vars:)
  # requires a github token with "repo" access. Create one here: https://github.com/settings/tokens
  github_token = ENV["GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN"]
  raise "GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN" unless github_token

  heroku_token = ENV["HEROKU_TOKEN"] || `heroku auth:token`.strip.presence
  raise "You are not logged into heroku cli. Log in with heroku login" unless heroku_token

  client = PlatformAPI.connect_oauth(heroku_token)
  app_setup_client = PlatformAPI::AppSetup.new(client)

  app_setup_client.create(
    {
      app: {
        name: app_name,
        organization: heroku_org
      },
      source_blob: {
        url:
          "https://user:#{github_token}@api.github.com/repos/#{github_account}/#{github_repo}/tarball/#{branch}"
      },
      overrides: {
        env: config_vars
      }
    }
  )
end

Then deploy updates using git and destroy the app when you are done:
You might name the app something like mycompany-pr123 and the remote pr123

# add the git remote
heroku git:remote -a <app-name> -r <git-remote-name>

# deploy via git
git push <git-remote_name> <branch>:master

# destroy the app when done
heroku apps:destroy -a <app-name>

One improvement you can make is to have the script wait for the app to finish being created. You can do this by polling the app status. A basic function to wait for an app would look like the below. You get setup_id from the response of app_setup_client.create call.

  def wait_for_app_setup(setup_id)
    puts "waiting for app setup to complete..."

    prev_status = {}

    loop do
      status = app_setup_client.info(setup_id)

      if status["status"] != "pending"
        puts # add new line after the progress dots
        return status
      end

      puts status if status.to_json != prev_status.to_json
      print "."
      sleep 5
      prev_status = status
    end
  end

Thank you so much for this script

app_setup_client.info(setup_id) sometimes throws a 500 error ( the app still is created so thankfully not that blocking) i haven't still investigated the issue, but have u encountered the error, and if so do u know what might cause the issue

@chaadow Sorry, I have not run into that issue. Are you sure you passing in the correct setup_id? Would look something like this:

setup_response = create_heroku_app(...)
setup_id = setup_response["id"]
wait_for_app_setup(setup_id)

It worked, thanks again!

Thanks to you, I've recreated an entire review app generation system that integrates with github through a webhook. and Even though the github integration came back, I just stuck with my system since it's better :D

The platform API is really cool and allows you to customize a LOT. The heroku github integration has its own limitations, ( cannot execute scripts at certain levels/states of the deployment)

I can launch a db restoration process, shutdown/startup dynos on the fly, remap the dyno formation, create addons on the fly by adding enabling/disabling github labels etc..
It also allowed us to optimize drastically our dyno/addon costs!

Thanks again, your gist in addition to the def wait_for_app_setup(setup_id) ( i've opted for a clock process that checks on the status every minute and saves the build state in a db table ) were more than enough to get me started 👌

@chaadow Awesome! Glad to hear it.