Heroku! A primer for quick web app prototyping using Rails APIs

Here’s the scenario: you’re a developer and you’ve built an an API you would like to access from the web. Hosting feels costly in terms of time and money. What options are there?

Heroku is a great solution for hosting APIs. It runs on top of the Amazon Cloud (AWS) and has a user friendly web app, which once set up, is hassle free.

Let’s set one up…

First step is to have an existing API pushed to GitHub. In this example I’m using a Rails API. It’s important to make sure once your API is built and running, that you setup the folder architecture properly.

The Root directory must be the top folder, for Heroku to work properly. Also make sure you are using PostGreSQL for your database…

Rails API with the root directory exposing all the API files/folders

The next thing to do is create a Heroku account. The setup is quick and painless. After following all the website prompt and making an account, head to the Dashboard…

This is where Heroku will show your supported APIs if you have any. To create a new API, click on the new tab, and select Create New App.