NOTE This file was generated by Descript 1 00:00:00,219 --> 00:00:01,840 Hi guys, and welcome back. 2 00:00:01,900 --> 00:00:04,779 In this video, let's talk about Heroku real quick. 3 00:00:04,779 --> 00:00:07,210 What is it and why it exists? 4 00:00:07,600 --> 00:00:10,240 So what happens when we run our flask apps? 5 00:00:10,780 --> 00:00:16,690 We know that when we type flask run on our console, something starts and suddenly we 6 00:00:16,690 --> 00:00:22,960 can start making requests to 127.0.0.1, colon 5000 and things start to happen. 7 00:00:23,740 --> 00:00:27,520 What's happening is a development server starts and we're able 8 00:00:27,520 --> 00:00:29,500 to listen to incoming requests. 9 00:00:29,500 --> 00:00:34,150 So there is a piece of software there that when we make a request using a browser 10 00:00:34,150 --> 00:00:39,310 or something similar, to the address, then it intercepts that, and it gives it 11 00:00:39,310 --> 00:00:43,330 to the flask app, which deals with them and responds appropriately with whatever 12 00:00:43,330 --> 00:00:45,640 data we've coded it to respond with. 13 00:00:46,236 --> 00:00:47,976 But here's the thing about deployments. 14 00:00:48,278 --> 00:00:53,438 And that is this question who can make requests to our app when we run it? 15 00:00:54,278 --> 00:00:58,478 And the answer is anyone that has access to the computer that's running the app. 16 00:00:58,928 --> 00:01:04,118 So if you run the app in your computer, then anybody who has access to connect 17 00:01:04,148 --> 00:01:09,818 to your computer via the internet or any network, then they will be able to 18 00:01:09,818 --> 00:01:15,878 make requests to the app if you know how to do it, but it's not so easy. 19 00:01:15,908 --> 00:01:19,628 Most computers are not set up to be accessible easily from the outside. 20 00:01:20,303 --> 00:01:24,293 And when you run your flask app, that it defaults to only being 21 00:01:24,293 --> 00:01:26,453 accessible to your computer. 22 00:01:26,463 --> 00:01:28,613 Nobody else can make any requests. 23 00:01:28,913 --> 00:01:33,683 And even if you set up the flask app so that it will listen to requests coming 24 00:01:33,683 --> 00:01:37,673 from elsewhere, other than your computer, it is very likely that your computer 25 00:01:37,673 --> 00:01:41,858 is not set up to be able to accept incoming requests from the outside. 26 00:01:42,188 --> 00:01:44,018 And that it's mostly for security reasons. 27 00:01:44,048 --> 00:01:47,108 You don't want random people to be making requests to your computer. 28 00:01:47,768 --> 00:01:52,428 And, but also there is a practical reason, which is that every internet 29 00:01:52,428 --> 00:01:57,588 connected device, such as your computer or your phone, have an IP address and 30 00:01:57,648 --> 00:02:01,278 other internet connected devices can use that IP address to connect to it. 31 00:02:01,428 --> 00:02:06,648 So computer B can connect to computer A as long as it knows its IP address. 32 00:02:07,363 --> 00:02:11,163 But our ISP, our internet service providers, normally do 33 00:02:11,163 --> 00:02:13,113 not provide fixed IP addresses. 34 00:02:13,143 --> 00:02:15,123 They provide dynamic IP addresses. 35 00:02:15,663 --> 00:02:19,893 So your computer's IP address today may be different from the IP address tomorrow. 36 00:02:20,283 --> 00:02:23,973 And that is so that ISP's can reuse IP addresses. 37 00:02:24,363 --> 00:02:27,043 When your computer goes offline, they can give your an IP address 38 00:02:27,063 --> 00:02:28,263 to somebody else's computer. 39 00:02:28,533 --> 00:02:31,383 And then when they go offline, they can give it to someone else and so on. 40 00:02:31,683 --> 00:02:34,233 So it's a cost cutting measure in a way, and sometimes you 41 00:02:34,233 --> 00:02:36,183 can pay for a fixed IP address. 42 00:02:36,783 --> 00:02:37,893 So, obviously that's a problem. 43 00:02:37,923 --> 00:02:42,570 If you want to open up your computer and you want to serve your app running 44 00:02:42,570 --> 00:02:46,693 in your computer, you need a fixed IP address so that other people can 45 00:02:46,723 --> 00:02:51,763 connect to it and they don't have to relearn your IP address every time that 46 00:02:51,763 --> 00:02:53,203 your computer restarts, for example. 47 00:02:53,631 --> 00:02:55,491 So why do we deploy our apps? 48 00:02:55,761 --> 00:02:58,041 Well, to circumvent these problems. 49 00:02:58,135 --> 00:03:03,335 When we deploy, we put our code, run it in a computer that has a fixed IP address, is 50 00:03:03,335 --> 00:03:07,415 open to connections, has hardware that's been specifically designed to be cheap and 51 00:03:07,415 --> 00:03:12,575 efficient when handling web applications, and perhaps even more importantly, it 52 00:03:12,575 --> 00:03:16,565 is a computer that has been created specifically to deploy our app. 53 00:03:16,895 --> 00:03:22,318 So we don't care if you know, somebody hacks into it and causes some damage. 54 00:03:22,858 --> 00:03:24,848 We just destroy it and recreate it. 55 00:03:24,848 --> 00:03:26,588 And normally we can do that virtually. 56 00:03:26,858 --> 00:03:30,998 So there's a whole host of benefits to deploy our apps on the internet with 57 00:03:30,998 --> 00:03:35,198 one of these server rental companies, as I'll discuss in a moment rather 58 00:03:35,198 --> 00:03:37,028 than deploying it on your own computer. 59 00:03:38,213 --> 00:03:41,003 However, there are times where you do want to deploy on your own computer. 60 00:03:41,033 --> 00:03:46,073 For example, you might buy a Raspberry Pi and deploy a flask app in it 61 00:03:46,103 --> 00:03:50,813 and make it publicly accessible within your private wifi network. 62 00:03:50,843 --> 00:03:54,653 Some people do that to make APIs that they use within their 63 00:03:54,653 --> 00:03:56,303 home automation, for example. 64 00:03:56,843 --> 00:04:00,263 So these are things you can do because at the end of the day, when you deploy 65 00:04:00,263 --> 00:04:03,203 your app, all you're doing is you're grabbing your code and you're running 66 00:04:03,203 --> 00:04:07,733 it in a computer that is open to connections and has a fixed IP address. 67 00:04:07,823 --> 00:04:10,853 And you can do the same with your private network if you know how. 68 00:04:11,243 --> 00:04:13,493 We're not going to learn how to do that in this course, we're just 69 00:04:13,493 --> 00:04:16,043 going to learn how to deploy online. 70 00:04:16,853 --> 00:04:18,803 So the payments to Heroku. 71 00:04:19,013 --> 00:04:22,613 Heroku is a server rental company, basically. 72 00:04:22,823 --> 00:04:28,503 There's many like it, for example, Google Cloud, or AWS, DigitalOcean, 73 00:04:28,823 --> 00:04:33,323 and lots more, and what they do is, they rent out their computers. 74 00:04:33,483 --> 00:04:36,003 That they called servers since they are used for serving 75 00:04:36,003 --> 00:04:37,863 data, they rent them out to us. 76 00:04:37,893 --> 00:04:38,943 We can rent them. 77 00:04:38,943 --> 00:04:44,803 And then we get access to a small, very cheap server that we can use 78 00:04:44,803 --> 00:04:47,323 to put our code and run our app and connect it to the internet. 79 00:04:47,983 --> 00:04:50,803 In Heroku, the servers are called the Dynos, but they're really 80 00:04:50,803 --> 00:04:53,423 just computers running our code and connected it to the internet. 81 00:04:53,443 --> 00:04:55,633 So you're going to see the term Dyno here and there. 82 00:04:56,333 --> 00:05:00,146 Heroku gives us also a domain name for every app that we deploy. 83 00:05:00,236 --> 00:05:04,826 For example, teclado dash microblog dash app dot herokuapp.com 84 00:05:05,246 --> 00:05:06,626 instead of an IP address. 85 00:05:06,656 --> 00:05:09,626 That's just so it's easier to share our pages with other people. 86 00:05:10,196 --> 00:05:14,306 If you only have an IP address, giving that to someone else looks a bit weird. 87 00:05:14,426 --> 00:05:16,676 So getting a domain name is helpful. 88 00:05:17,043 --> 00:05:19,713 So what else does Heroku do other than take our code and run it? 89 00:05:20,778 --> 00:05:24,588 Well, they do everything they can to make money by making it easy for us to 90 00:05:24,588 --> 00:05:28,068 deploy our applications and make sure that we continue to use their services. 91 00:05:28,366 --> 00:05:32,136 Do note that Heroku has a free plan, so we don't have to pay for most of it. 92 00:05:32,376 --> 00:05:36,726 But the idea is that as we use Heroku more and more, we want more 93 00:05:36,726 --> 00:05:39,066 and more of their services and we'll end up paying money for it. 94 00:05:39,156 --> 00:05:41,316 That's that's the general premise of any business, of course. 95 00:05:41,650 --> 00:05:45,430 So Heroku makes it easy to put our code in their servers with one click. 96 00:05:45,460 --> 00:05:47,050 You can do that, which is great. 97 00:05:47,690 --> 00:05:49,820 They run our flask apps continuously. 98 00:05:49,850 --> 00:05:53,450 They restart them if they crash or they restart the server if there's an error. 99 00:05:53,870 --> 00:05:58,310 They let us see the flask app logs and error so we can debug them very easily 100 00:05:58,910 --> 00:06:00,410 and they handle a lot more stuff. 101 00:06:01,510 --> 00:06:05,560 Heroku also has Add-ons, which add more functionality to Heroku. 102 00:06:05,590 --> 00:06:09,490 For example, it can create databases for our apps and it can help 103 00:06:09,490 --> 00:06:13,630 us find errors more easily with debug functionality and so forth. 104 00:06:13,980 --> 00:06:15,910 Theredozens of add-ons for Heroku. 105 00:06:16,090 --> 00:06:18,100 And we can even create our own if we know how to. 106 00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:22,690 Everything that Heroku does is done to make the deployment and 107 00:06:22,690 --> 00:06:26,650 maintenance job easier, deploying the servers and maintaining them, 108 00:06:26,770 --> 00:06:28,300 keeping them up to date and so on. 109 00:06:28,627 --> 00:06:32,261 Heroku has a generous free plan, like I mentioned, but it is limited 110 00:06:32,261 --> 00:06:35,651 to a thousand hours per month shared between all your free projects. 111 00:06:35,681 --> 00:06:40,001 So if you have a lot of different free projects in your Heroku account, they 112 00:06:40,001 --> 00:06:45,161 will be turned off once you reach the 1000 hour limit of the servers being up. 113 00:06:46,061 --> 00:06:49,241 After that the cost is from $7 a month per Dyno. 114 00:06:49,251 --> 00:06:54,641 So if you have 10 projects and 10 dynos and they're all in the 7 dollar a month 115 00:06:54,641 --> 00:06:57,011 plan, obviously you'd pay $70 per month. 116 00:06:57,431 --> 00:07:00,161 They have much more expensive Dynos as well. 117 00:07:00,401 --> 00:07:03,811 And they are usually used for things that need a lot of performance. 118 00:07:04,921 --> 00:07:05,911 So is it worth it? 119 00:07:06,031 --> 00:07:08,071 This is really the key question, right? 120 00:07:08,225 --> 00:07:13,175 Why would you pay for example, $500 a month for one Heroku Dyno in its 121 00:07:13,175 --> 00:07:18,445 most expensive format when you can potentially buy your own computer 122 00:07:18,445 --> 00:07:22,495 for that money and set it up so it runs online from your house. 123 00:07:23,485 --> 00:07:25,075 And, and do it that way. 124 00:07:25,855 --> 00:07:27,565 Well, Heroku does a lot for you. 125 00:07:28,315 --> 00:07:31,815 If you have the time, time to do the things that Heroku does for you, then you 126 00:07:31,815 --> 00:07:35,175 could rent a cheaper server or even buy your own computer and run your apps there. 127 00:07:36,105 --> 00:07:39,885 But the time saving from using Heroku may be worth it. 128 00:07:40,305 --> 00:07:43,998 If that means that you can spend that time doing something else, or sometimes, 129 00:07:44,058 --> 00:07:47,208 that may mean that you don't have to hire somebody to do those things as 130 00:07:47,208 --> 00:07:48,408 that can be very expensive as well. 131 00:07:49,453 --> 00:07:52,153 However Heroku is known to be relatively expensive. 132 00:07:52,273 --> 00:07:54,343 So that's something to keep in mind that there are cheaper 133 00:07:54,343 --> 00:07:55,963 options available as well. 134 00:07:56,023 --> 00:07:59,143 Heroku is just really easy to use and very convenient. 135 00:07:59,908 --> 00:08:03,808 Some of the things that Heroku does for you that you probably don't want to do 136 00:08:04,318 --> 00:08:09,628 are things like handle operating system updates in your servers, restarting apps 137 00:08:09,778 --> 00:08:13,408 and the servers themselves if they crash or they have any problem, provisioning 138 00:08:13,408 --> 00:08:18,148 databases, patching security issues in your operating systems, handling 139 00:08:18,178 --> 00:08:22,768 SSL certificates so your websites are secured, automatic scalability, things 140 00:08:22,768 --> 00:08:26,638 like if you get a sudden surge in users accessing your page, they can provision 141 00:08:26,638 --> 00:08:31,198 more Dynos for you so that you can handle the traffic and then scale back once 142 00:08:31,228 --> 00:08:33,898 the surge is over and a lot more stuff. 143 00:08:34,693 --> 00:08:38,143 So these are things that are simply not easy to do manually. 144 00:08:38,143 --> 00:08:40,243 And if you have to do them, you have to spend a lot of time doing them. 145 00:08:40,273 --> 00:08:44,023 So that is the trade-off there as to whether it's worth it or not. 146 00:08:45,243 --> 00:08:48,963 So I'm going to show you Heroku, not because I expect you to end up paying $500 147 00:08:48,963 --> 00:08:52,563 a month for a server, but because if you want to deploy your apps and share them 148 00:08:52,563 --> 00:08:57,353 with your employers or your users quickly, there's no easier way than using Heroku. 149 00:08:57,543 --> 00:09:00,673 So if you're working on a prototype or a new project or something like that 150 00:09:00,673 --> 00:09:02,343 and you just want to get it out there. 151 00:09:03,058 --> 00:09:06,311 Get it on Heroku takes 10 minutes, if that, once you 152 00:09:06,311 --> 00:09:07,211 know how to do it, of course. 153 00:09:07,541 --> 00:09:09,721 And then it's online and it's freely available. 154 00:09:09,901 --> 00:09:11,251 The free tier is very generous. 155 00:09:11,251 --> 00:09:12,511 You can use it for many things. 156 00:09:12,511 --> 00:09:15,931 I've used the free tier in Heroku for years with my account 157 00:09:16,351 --> 00:09:17,941 and, and it's great, you know. 158 00:09:17,941 --> 00:09:21,781 Sometimes you go up to the paid tier for specific projects if you really need to. 159 00:09:21,991 --> 00:09:23,521 But other than that, you can use the free tier. 160 00:09:24,091 --> 00:09:27,571 And the finally it's going to look great in your portfolio, if you deploy your 161 00:09:27,571 --> 00:09:31,981 web apps, if you give your employers your code, that's going to be a great step. 162 00:09:32,011 --> 00:09:36,031 But if you can show that you also know how to deploy it and share it with users, 163 00:09:36,271 --> 00:09:38,341 that's a massive step forward as well. 164 00:09:38,641 --> 00:09:40,151 So this is what I'm going to show you Heroku. 165 00:09:40,261 --> 00:09:43,621 It's easy, straightforward, it's good, and it's going to look great 166 00:09:43,741 --> 00:09:44,971 when you have your apps deployed. 167 00:09:45,766 --> 00:09:48,196 So thank you guys for joining me in this video now that you know a little bit 168 00:09:48,196 --> 00:09:52,876 more about what Heroku is, let's get started with Heroku in the next one. 169 00:09:53,266 --> 00:09:53,866 I'll see you there.