Deploying your MeteorJs app in Google App Engine

Hi all,

Recently I decided to use MeteorJs to develop a private web app and although developing for MeteorJs was very fun, deploying to a cloud server like Google Cloud or Amazon... not so much. In my head, all I had to do was to start up an App Engine instance, remote SSH, install MeteorJs, clone my repo, run the code and that was it.

But little did I know that by the time I closed the SSH window, my App Engine instance would shut down.

So after a lot of googling and, having been able to find articles that helped me, none of them delivered the full solution and I had to get the ideas from all of them so could get it working.

Ok, so let's cut to the chase - this will be short and sweet.

Step 1:

Have your MeteorJS code ready. Duh.

Step 2:

Create an account with mLabs (www.mlabs.com) and create a MongoDB instance using Google Cloud. They have a free tier. You can also get a MongoDB instance in Google Cloud yourself and manage that. Refer to this link!

Create a user for your MongoDB, and don't forget the credentials as you are going to need it later on.

Step 3:

Edit your package.json file at the root of your MeteorJs project and add the following (do not remove the "start" line):

  "scripts": {
    "cleanup": "rm -rf ../bundle/",
    "dist": "npm run cleanup && meteor build ../ --directory --architecture os.linux.x86_64 --server-only",
    "predeploy": "npm run dist && cp app.yaml ../bundle/ && cp Dockerfile ../bundle/",
    "deploy": "npm run predeploy && (cd ../bundle && gcloud app deploy -q)",
    "start": "meteor run"
  },

STEP 4

Install Google Cloud SDK if you have not done so.

STEP 5

Run the following command inside your project root folder:
gcloud beta app gen-config --custom

STEP 6

A Dockerfile will be creted in your project. Delete all contents inside and add this:

FROM gcr.io/google_appengine/nodejs
COPY . /app/
RUN (cd programs/server && npm install --unsafe-perm)
CMD node main.js

STEP 7

Delete everything inside the app.yaml file that was also created in your project and add this:

entrypoint: meteor run
env: flex
runtime: custom
env_variables:
  ROOT_URL: https://<PROJECT_ID>.appspot-preview.com
  MONGO_URL: "mongodb://<user>:<pwd>@<instance>.mlab.com:57444/<db_name>"
  DISABLE_WEBSOCKETS: "1"
skip_files:
- ^(.*/)?\.dockerignore$
- ^(.*/)?\npm-debug.log$
- ^(.*/)?\yarn-error.log$
- ^(.*/)?\.git$
- ^(.*/)?\.hg$
- ^(.*/)?\.svn$

The project_id you will take from the Google Cloud Dashboard. The mongo_url you will take from the mLabs dashboard.

STEP 8:

Run npm run deploy. It will take a while but after a few minutes you should see a brand new App Engine instance up and running and you can then try accessing your webapp in your browser!

Hope this helps.