Create a heroku app for user testing (Python)

These are steps to follow for setting up a test website for user testing. Create a heroku app from your server side rendered website.

This is useful for when you have a part of a website that is going through a large overhaul.

Set up Heroku

heroku create
- This will set up heroku to accept code
- You can create a specific name instead of using the auto generated names
  - ex: heroku create app-name-thing
get push heroku main
- this will put the code into the project
heroku ps:scale web=1
- this will check that something's live
heroku open
- open up the running app

heroku logs
- check all logs
- add --tail for just the last few logs
Procfile
- the procfile is kind of like the scripts in package.json in a npm project

After installing the app's dependencies locally, you can the app by running the Procfile
- install python dependencies with pip install -r requirements.txt
- check installed files with pip list
Do any other setup that you need to do to run your python app
- ie django you might need to run python manage.py collectstatic to use local assets
then run the local environment with
- heroku local web
- or on windows run heroku local web -f Procfile.windows
- this will set up a local heroku web server on localhost:5000

Local changes need to be pushed to heroku
- this can be things like installing new packages
- Add your packages and made edits then run heroku local to test that they work
add and commit with git
then run git push heroku main
verify that the site is live with heroku open

You can store encryption keys and other external resource addresses in config vars

set config vars with the following syntax
- example: heroku config:set TIMES=1
then view the config vars with
- heroku config