Deploying to Heroku

If you've been following along with Getting Started, it's time to deploy so you can use it beyond just your local machine. Heroku is an easy and supported way to deploy hubot.

Install the Heroku Toolbelt to start, then follow their ‘Getting Started' instructions, including logging in the first time:

% heroku login
                Enter your Heroku credentials.
                Email: youremail@example.com
                Password:
                Could not find an existing public key.
                Would you like to generate one? [Yn]
                Generating new SSH public key.
                Uploading ssh public key /Users/you/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
                

Inside your new hubot directory, make sure you've created a git repository, and that your work is committed:

% git init
                % git add .
                % git commit -m "Initial commit"
                

Then create a Heroku application:

% heroku create
                Creating rosemary-britches-123... done, stack is cedar
                http://rosemary-britches-123.herokuapp.com/ | git@heroku.com:rosemary-britches-123.git
                Git remote heroku added
                

Before you deploy the application, you'll need to configure some environment variables for hubot to use. The specific variables you'll need depends on which adapter and scripts you are using. For Campfire, with no other scripts, you'd need to set the following environment variables:

% heroku config:set HUBOT_CAMPFIRE_ACCOUNT=yourcampfireaccount
                % heroku config:set HUBOT_CAMPFIRE_TOKEN=yourcampfiretoken
                % heroku config:set HUBOT_CAMPFIRE_ROOMS=comma,separated,list,of,rooms,to,join
                

At this point, you are ready to deploy and start chatting. With Heroku, that's a git push away:

% git push heroku master
                

You'll see some text flying, and eventually some success. You should be able to see your bot in your configured chat rooms at this point. If not, you can peek at the logs to try to debug:

% heroku logs
                

If you make any changes to your hubot, just commit and push them as before:

% git commit -am "Awesome scripts OMG"
                % git push heroku master
                

Some scripts needs Redis to work, Heroku offers an addon called Redis Cloud, which has a free plan. To use it:

% heroku addons:create rediscloud
                

Free dynos on Heroku will sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. That means your hubot would leave the chat room and only rejoin when it does get traffic. This is extremely inconvenient since most interaction is done through chat, and hubot has to be online and in the room to respond to messages. To get around this, you can use the hubot-heroku-keepalive script, which will keep your free dyno alive for up to 18 hours/day. If you never want Hubot to sleep, you will need to upgrade to Heroku's hobby plan.