Deploy to now
Right, we have a bot that does a few things but it's on our development environment, so it can't stay there forever, well it could but it'd be pretty impcratcical. Lets put our bot on a server somewhere to do it's thing.
To do this we're going to be using now, now allows for simple deployments from the CLI if you're not fimailiar with now then take a quick look at the documentation in these examples we're going to be using the now-cli.
There's a few things we need to do in order to get our bot ready to go on now, let's list them quickly and then go into detail.
- Signup and install
now-cli - Add
nowsettings +.npmignorefile - Add
.envvariables as secrets - Add npm
deployscript - Re jig
picture-bot.js
Ready? Lets do this! 💪
Signup and install now-cli
Fist up lets signup for zeit ▲ create an account and authenticate, then we can install the CLI.
Install now globally on our machine so you can use it everywhere, to install the now-cli from the terminal enter:
npm install -g now
Once it's completed login with:
now --login
The first time you run now, it'll ask for your email address in order to identify you. Go to the email account to supplied when sigining up an click on the email sent to you from now, and you'll be logged in automatically.
If you need to switch the account or re-authenticate, run the same command again.
You can always check out the now-cli documentation for more information along with the your first deployment guide.
Add now settings
Ok, so that's signup and install sorted, we can now configure the bot for deploying to now. First up lets add the now settings to our package.json file, I've put it in between my npm scripts and the author name in my package.json:
"scripts": {
"start": "node index.js"
},
"now": {
"alias": "my-awesome-alias",
"files": [
"src",
"index.js"
]
},
"author": "Scott Spence",
This was a source of major confusion for me so I'm hoping I can save you the pain I went through trying to configure this, all the relevant documentation is there you just need to put it all together 😎
If you find anything in here that doesn't make sense or is just outright wrong then please log an issue or create a pull request 👍
The now settings alias is to give your deployment a shothand name over the auto generated URL that now creates, the files section covers what we want to include in the depoloyment to now we'll go over the file structure shortly. Basically what is included in the files array is all that get pused up to the now servers.
All good so for?
Ok, now we need to add a .npmignore file in the root of the project and add the following line to it:
!tweets.csv
The tweets.csv needs to go up to the now server to be used by the bot, but we previously included it in our .gitignore which is what now uses to build your project when it's being loaded to the server. So this means that the file isn't going to get loaded unless we add the .npmignore to not ignore the tweets.csv 😅
Add .env variables as secrets
Ok, our super duper secret Twitter keys will need to be stored as secrets in now this is a pretty neat feature where you can define anything as a secret and reference it as an alias with now.
Lets start, so the syntax is now secrets add my-secret "my value" so for our .env keys add them all in giving them a descriptive [but short!] name.
You will not need to wrap your "my value" in quotes but the documentation does say "when in doubt, wrap your value in quotes"
Ok, so from the terminal now secrets ls should list out your secrets you just created:
$ now secrets ls
> 5 secrets found under spences10 [1s]
id name created
sec_xxxxxxxxxxZpLDxxxxxxxxxx ds-twit-key 23h ago
sec_xxxxxxxxxxTE5Kxxxxxxxxxx ds-twit-secret 23h ago
sec_xxxxxxxxxxNorlxxxxxxxxxx ds-twit-access 23h ago
sec_xxxxxxxxxxMe1Cxxxxxxxxxx ds-twit-access-secret 23h ago
sec_xxxxxxxxxxMJ2jxxxxxxxxxx nasa-key 23h ago
Add npm deploy script
Now we have out secrets defined we can create a deployment script to deploy to now, so in our package.json lets add an additional script:
"main": "index.js",
"scripts": {
"start": "node index.js",
"deploy": "now -e CONSUMER_KEY=@ds-twit-key -e CONSUMER_SECRET=@ds-twit-secret -e ACCESS_TOKEN=@ds-twit-access -e ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=@ds-twit-access-secret -e NASA_KEY=@nasa-key"
},
"now": {
Lets go over what we have added there, deploy will run the now command and pass it all our environment -e variables and the associated secret value, if we break it down into separate lines it will be a bit clearer:
now
-e CONSUMER_KEY=@ds-twit-key
-e CONSUMER_SECRET=@ds-twit-secret
-e ACCESS_TOKEN=@ds-twit-access
-e ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=@ds-twit-access-secret
-e NASA_KEY=@nasa-key
Re jig picture-bot.js
Ok, because now deployments are immutable it means that there's no write access to the disk where we want to save our NASA photo of the day, so to get around that we need to use the /tmp file location.
Shout out to @Tim from zeit for helping me out with this!
In the picture-bot.js module add the following two lines to the top of the module:
const os = require('os')
const tmpDir = os.tmpdir()
Those two lines give us the temp directory of the operating system, so if like me you're on Windows it will work as well as if you are on another stsyem like a linux based system, which is what now is. In our saveFile function we're going to use tmpDir to save our file.
We've taken out the nasa.jpg from the getPhoto function as we can define that information in the saveFile function, the NASA potd is not just a 'jpeg some items posted there are videos as well. We we can define the type with a ternary function off of the body being passed in, this will send a tweet with a link to the video:
function saveFile(body) {
const fileName = body.media_type === 'image/jpeg' ? 'nasa.jpg' : 'nasa.mp4';
const filePath = path.join(tmpDir + `/${fileName}`)
console.log(`saveFile: file PATH ${filePath}`)
if (fileName === 'nasa.mp4') {
// tweet the link
const params = {
status: 'NASA video link: ' + body.url
}
postStatus(params)
return
}
const file = fs.createWriteStream(filePath)
request(body).pipe(file).on('close', err => {
if (err) {
console.log(err)
} else {
console.log('Media saved!')
const descriptionText = body.title
uploadMedia(descriptionText, filePath)
}
})
}
The completed code here:
const Twit = require('twit')
const request = require('request')
const fs = require('fs')
const config = require('./config')
const path = require('path')
const bot = new Twit(config)
const os = require('os')
const tmpDir = os.tmpdir()
const getPhoto = () => {
const parameters = {
url: 'https://api.nasa.gov/planetary/apod',
qs: {
api_key: process.env.NASA_KEY
},
encoding: 'binary'
}
request.get(parameters, (err, respone, body) => {
body = JSON.parse(body)
saveFile(body)
})
}
function saveFile(body) {
const fileName = body.media_type === 'image/jpeg' ? 'nasa.jpg' : 'nasa.mp4';
const filePath = path.join(tmpDir + `/${fileName}`)
console.log(`saveFile: file PATH ${filePath}`)
if (fileName === 'nasa.mp4') {
// tweet the link
const params = {
status: 'NASA video link: ' + body.url
}
postStatus(params)
return
}
const file = fs.createWriteStream(filePath)
request(body).pipe(file).on('close', err => {
if (err) {
console.log(err)
} else {
console.log('Media saved!')
const descriptionText = body.title
uploadMedia(descriptionText, filePath)
}
})
}
function uploadMedia(descriptionText, fileName) {
console.log(`uploadMedia: file PATH ${fileName}`)
bot.postMediaChunked({
file_path: fileName
}, (err, data, respone) => {
if (err) {
console.log(err)
} else {
console.log(data)
const params = {
status: descriptionText,
media_ids: data.media_id_string
}
postStatus(params)
}
})
}
function postStatus(params) {
bot.post('statuses/update', params, (err, data, respone) => {
if (err) {
console.log(err)
} else {
console.log('Status posted!')
}
})
}
module.exports = getPhoto
Ok, thats it! We're ready to deploy to now!🚀
So from the terminal we call our deployment script we defined earlier:
npm run deploy
You will get some output:
$ now -e CONSUMER_KEY=@ds-twit-key -e CONSUMER_SECRET=@ds-twit-secret -e ACCESS_TOKEN=@ds-twit-access -e ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=@ds-twit-access-secret -e NASA_KEY=@nasa-key
> Deploying ~\gitrepos\tweebot-play under spences10
> Using Node.js 7.10.0 (default)
> Ready! https://twee-bot-play-rapjuiuddx.now.sh (copied to clipboard) [5s]
> Upload [====================] 100% 0.0s
> Sync complete (1.54kB) [2s]
> Initializing…
> Building
> ▲ npm install
> ⧗ Installing:
> ‣ csv-parse@^1.2.0
> ‣ dotenv@^4.0.0
> ‣ rita@^1.1.63
> ‣ tabletop@^1.5.2
> ‣ twit@^2.2.5
> ✓ Installed 106 modules [3s]
> ▲ npm start
> > [email protected] start /home/nowuser/src
> > node index.js
> saveFile: file PATH /tmp/nasa.jpg
> Media saved!
> uploadMedia: file PATH /tmp/nasa.jpg
Woot! You have your bot deployed! 🙌
If you click on the link produced you will be able to inspect the bot as it is on now there's also a handy logs section on the page where you can check for output. 👍