I’ve started working on a prototype for a health care proxy innovation (to make it easier for primary care doctors to help their patients document their health care proxy wishes). I wanted to make sure that this is secure, and after a discussion with a good friend, I decided to learn how to use Aptible to see if I could quickly stand up a Rails application in a secure environment. I was able to do it relatively quickly (and now having done it once, I’m sure it will be much faster).

Quickstart

Aptibles Rails Quick start guide was very helpful, but missed a few key steps for me. It does have links (especially to those that help you to understand the Aptible setup) so I would still recommend it.

Install Aptible CLI

brew cask install aptible

aptible login

Create your app and database in Aptible

You can create these with the CLI, but I used the web interface when I signed up for an account. I chose a Postgresql database.

Later, you will need the following:

app name = the name listed in the web interfaces for apps (like the Quickstart I’ll refer to this as $APP_URL)
git repository = click on your app, and this is listed at the top as “git remote” ($GIT_REMOTE)
database url = in the web interface, click on Databases, click on the created database ($DATABASE_URL)

Create a test rails app

mkdir app
cd app
gem install rails
rails new . --database=postgresql

I add a welcome controller so I can customize the message I see.

rails generate controller Welcome index

Update routes.rb to include root 'welcome#index'

Create your databases and test it locally.

rails db:create
rails s

Create your Dockerfile

I had a lot of trouble with the default Dockerfile (mostly with yarn and precompiling assets). This ended up working.

Create your .aptible.yml

Set the aptible environment variables

You need to let aptible know your app name, and then any additional environment variables.

aptible config:set --app "$APP_NAME" "DATABASE_URL=$DB_URL"

Note: replace $APP_NAME and $DB_URL

You also have to set SECRET_KEY_BASE as an environment variable otherwise the build will fail (when launching rails or precompiling assets you will get a message: secret_key_base not set for environment “production”. It instructs you to set it in rails credentials:edit. Unfortunately it does not matter if you set it there. I suspect this is because the injected .aptible.env likely has a setting for this which is blank if you don’t set it)

aptible config:set "SECRET_KEY_BASE=`rails secret`"

Setup your git remote and push

git init .
git remote add aptible $GIT_REMOTE
git commit -a -m "Initial commit"
git push aptible master

When you push to aptible, it should then build your Docker image. This should work by now.

Connect an endpoint

Go to the web interface for your app > Endpoints

Add a new endpoint (most of the defaults should be correct if your push worked, most importantly, it should be forwarding to your CMD 3000).

Visit the URL - you should see your welcome message.

Save costs

To not incur the costs of a test container/db, I did the following:

for the app - scale this to 0
for the DB - deprovision. When you want to test this again, you will need to create a new db instance and update your DB url.