Creating the application

The first of this course is to create a Node.js application that can run on Heroku and locally (for testing).

Creation of a Git Repository

Our source code is going to be stored in a Git repository. Heroku uses Git for deployment, and it's also a better habit to use git.

To create a new empty repository, run on a terminal:

$ mkdir myapp
$ cd myapp
$ git init

We are now going to work on this myapp folder.

You can also host this repository on GitHub, this is optional but advised:

1. Create a repository on GitHub

2. On a terminal in the myapp folder run: git remote set-url upstream <git url for the repository>

The url for the repository on GitHub is in the format: https://github.com/<username>/<repository>.git.

Creation of a base for a Node.js application

Now that our git repository is ready, we can start working on writting our node.js application.

In a terminal in the myapp folder, run:

$ npm init

It will ask you for multiple questions and generate a package.json file. This file will contain the list of your dependencies (the librairies our program will depend on) and some others descriptives informations.

Commit our base

It's time to commit our first commit for this application:

$ git add package.json
$ git commit -m "Base package.json"

And push it to GitHub:

$ git push