Deploying JSP Web App on Heroku

19 Dec 2016 Web-Dev

Recently, I came across the term JavaServer Pages (JSP) on a job posting. I didn’t know what that is, so in order to get the basic idea, I built a JSP web app using Eclipse following a tutorial and deployed it on Heroku. Check out this simple web app and its source code.

After finishing the tutorial, we’ll get a completed MySQL powered JSP web app on localhost. Now, let me talk about how to deploy it on Heroku.

Create Heroku App

Let’s get started by creating a heroku app first by running the following command in terminal:

$ heroku create

Setup Database

Since Heroku doesn’t natively support MySQL, we need to install the ClearDB add-on in our app to provide MySQL support.

ClearDB is a powerful, fault tolerant database-as-a-service in the cloud for your MySQL powered applications.

Install ClearDB and create a remote database:

$ heroku addons:create cleardb:ignite --app <app_name>

Connect our app to ClearDB

Get our database URL:

$ heroku config | grep CLEARDB_DATABASE_URL

What we’ll get:

CLEARDB_DATABASE_URL => mysql://adffdadf2341:[email protected]/heroku_db?reconnect=true

It’s in this format:

mysql://DB_USERNAME:DB_PASSWORD@DB_HOST/DB_NAME?reconnect=true

Then we use these information to change the connection parameters accordingly in our app.

Copy local database to remote database:

mysqldump -h [server] -u [user] -p[password] local_DB_name | mysql -h [server] -u [user] -p[password] remote_DB_name

Deploy with Heroku CLI plugin

Install the heroku-deploy plugin:

$ heroku plugins:install heroku-cli-deploy

Create a WAR file of our app (Eclipse):
Right click on the project > Export > WAR file

Deploy our WAR file:

$ heroku war:deploy <path_to_war_file> --app <app_name>

View our app on Heroku:

$ heroku open --app <app_name>

Learning Resources