How to Deploy a Laravel App with MySQL on Heroku

I know there are several posts regarding hosting a laravel project on heroku but i am writing due to the issue i had for several weeks because i was hosting with a Windows OS.

Okay Let’s Start !

Things You Need

i. An online database. I will use db4free for this post, click here to create an account.

ii. A Heroku account. Click here to create an account.

iii. Heroku CLI (Command Line Interface ), click on this to download.
Or Vscode terminal (if you are using it as your text editor, this is what i use).

I believe you have an already existing laravel project that you want to host.
Using your cmd or Windows PowerShell, navigate to your project directory and run the following commands:
Step 1:
git init
git add .
git commit -m “initial commit”

Step 2:
heroku login
To login to your account.

Step 3:
heroku create <myappname>
(e.g heroku create shatap )

Step 4:
To create “Procfile” file on windows, run
echo “web: vendor/bin/heroku-php-apache2 public/” > Procfile

Note: this command <echo> gives me error → ‘buildpack failed’ and hinders my app from hosting properly. So if you encounter the same error, then run this command instead to create your Procfile file.
notepad Procfile
In the Procfile file, add these -> “web: vendor/bin/heroku-php-apache2 public/”
git add .
git commit -m “procfile”

Step 5:
To generate an app key for your app. Run
php artisan key:generate --show

heroku config:set APP_KEY = <key generated>

Step 6:
To host on heroku, run
git push heroku master

if you have more than one app hosted on heroku
git push heroku master --app <myappname>

To open your app from command line
heroku open --app <myappname>

Connecting db4free database to the App

Step 1
To sign up, fill the following and click on ‘Sign up’

MySQL database name: [a well defined database name]
MySQL username: [username you specified]
MySQL user password: [password you can remember]
Email address: [your email]

Step 2

Back to your Laravel project and go to config/database.php and update it with the db4free MySQL database details you just created.

// ‘mysql’ => [
// ‘driver’ => ‘mysql’,
// ‘host’ => env(‘DB_HOST’, ‘127.0.0.1’),
// ‘port’ => env(‘DB_PORT’, ‘3306’),
// ‘database’ => env(‘DB_DATABASE’, ‘forge’),
// ‘username’ => env(‘DB_USERNAME’, ‘forge’),
// ‘password’ => env(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘’),
// ‘unix_socket’ => env(‘DB_SOCKET’, ‘’),
// ‘charset’ => ‘utf8mb4’,
// ‘collation’ => ‘utf8mb4_unicode_ci’,
// ‘prefix’ => ‘’,
// ‘strict’ => false,
// ‘engine’ => null,
// ],
‘mysql’ => [
‘driver’ => ‘mysql’,
‘host’ => ‘db4free.net’,
‘port’ => ‘3306’,
‘database’ => your_database_name from_db4free,
‘username’ => your_db4free_username,
‘password’ => your_db4free_password,
‘charset’ => ‘utf8mb4’,
‘collation’ => ‘utf8mb4_unicode_ci’,
‘prefix’ => ‘’,
‘strict’ => false,
‘engine’ => null,
‘modes’=>[
‘ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY’,
‘STRICT_TRANS_TABLES’,
‘NO_ZERO_IN_DATE’,
‘NO_ZERO_DATE’,
‘ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO’,
‘NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION’,
],
],

Observe that I commented the former mysql settings to fix my new settings.

git add .
git commit -m "database changes"
git push heroku master

Step 3

To test if your database is working and run yourmigrations, type

heroku run bash

On the terminal type

php artisan migrate:status

If there is no error, then you have successfully included database to your site.

Else type this,

php artisan migrate

Viola! You have just hosted your Laravel app on Heroku. You have also learned how you can integrate MySQL server to enable your app work with the MySQL database.

To learn more about Heroku, you can visit Heroku Dev Center.

I hope this article is self exploratory and user-friendly. I will be glad to see comments and corrections.

You can follow me on twitter Oluebubechukwu