This is a cheatsheet for deploying a Rails on a Digital Ocean droplet using Dokku. This deployment also includes Sidekiq processes, multiple environments, and a custom domain.

• Local Setup
• Server Setup
• Dokku Setup
  • Dokku Plugins
  • Dokku Services
  • Dokku Domain
• Deployment Setup
  • Set Remote Repos
  • Set Default Branches
  • Set Environment Variables
• Useful Commands

1. Setup your Rails application.
2. Create a Procfile in the root of your Rails repos.

   web: bundle exec puma -C config/puma.rb
   worker: bundle exec sidekiq -e production -C config/sidekiq.yml
   

3. Create a post deploy hook in the rook of your Rails repo. This will automatically run db:migrate after deployment.

   # app.json
   {
     "name": "my_rails_app",
     "description": "My Rails App",
     "keywords": [],
     "scripts": {
       "dokku": {
         "postdeploy": "bundle exec rake db:migrate"
       }
     }
   }
   

4. Install the Dokku CLI for MacOS - brew install dokku/repo/dokku

1. Create a Digital Ocean droplet from the official Dokku image on the marketplace.
   • You will need at least 2GB of memory for bundle install to avoid swap.
2. After the server initializes immediately go to the IP address and set the admin public key.
3. Add a domain to the Digital Ocean project. Set the name servers and an A record pointing to the droplet.

These commands are run while you are SSH'd into the droplet.

Install the Postgres, Redis, and Let's Encrypt plugins. Dokku redirct, maintenance, and apt are nice to have as well.

sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-postgres.git
sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-redis.git
sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-letsencrypt.git
sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-redirect.git
sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-maintenance.git maintenance
sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku-community/dokku-apt apt

Create the Dokku services for the Rails application, Redis, and Postgres.

dokku apps:create my_rails_app
dokku postgres:create my_rails_app-postgres
dokku postgres:link my_rails_app-postgres my_rails_app
dokku redis:create my_rails_app-redis
dokku redis:link my_rails_app-redis my_rails_app

dokku domains:clear-global
dokku domains:set my_rails_app my-custom-domain.com
dokku config:set --no-restart my_rails_app [email protected]
dokku letsencrypt my_rails_app
dokku letsencrypt:cron-job --add

The firewall needs to allow traffic over port 80 to your droplet for Let's Encrypt to work. Let's Encrypt will block you after a few failures so it's best to work in their staging environment first.

dokku config:set --no-restart DOKKU_LETSENCRYPT_SERVER=staging

Re-enable the production environment.

dokku config:set --no-restart DOKKU_LETSENCRYPT_SERVER=default

Setup the remote staging and production repos on the Dokku server. There are two separate Dokku deployments on Digital Ocean with separate IP addresses.

git remote add staging dokku@<STAGING_IP_ADDRESS>:my_rails_app
git remote add production dokku@<PRODUCTION_IP_ADDRESS>:my_rails_app

We set the default branch for staging to develop and the default branch for production to main.

dokku --remote staging git:set deploy-branch develop
dokku --remote production git:set deploy-branch main

Set your environment variables. Note that we're using the --remote staging and --remote production flags which choose which Dokku deployment to run the commands against.

dokku --remote staging config:set RAILS_MASTER_KEY=`cat config/credentials/production.key`
dokku --remote production config:set RAILS_MASTER_KEY=`cat config/credentials/production.key`

Run the Rails console remotely.

dokku --remote <environment> run rails c

Scale your workers.

dokku --remote <environment> ps:scale worker=2

Stop your workers.

dokku --remote <environment> ps:stop

Deploy your application.

git push staging develop
git push production main

Reset your database.

dokku --remote <environment> run bundle exec rake db:reset