Article Description

Guide to deploying express server to AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

Elastic Beanstalk is an AWS EC2 deploying your code similar which supports many languages including Node, Python, Java, Go, Docker etc.

This is the what services like Railway use for their deployments under the hood with Railway just making it easier to deploy with premade tempaltes.Using Beanstalk is also a cheaper alternative

This guide assumes you already have a Express server.You can also use this as guideline for generally deploying any type of app to AWS.

Good reference when creating REST API's here.

1. Set up a role in AWS IAM that has the roles in the screenshot

AdministratorAccess

AWSElasticBeanstalkMulticontainerDocker

AWSElasticBeanstalkWebTier

AWSElasticBeanstalkWorkerTier

2. Navigate to AWS ElasticBeanstalk dashboard and create a new application

-On the first page set a name and such. Platform should be Node (which ever version). Make sure to use the Sample Application (dont upload your own code yet), this way you can be sure the deployment config is correct.

-On the second page use the Beanstalk role created earlier

-You should now be able to click 'Skip to Review' at the bottom of the page

-On the Review page double check the Platform Software section is using Nginx, then start the deployment

Config Deployment

-Copy the folder structure from this screenshot, starting from root

.ebextensions folder is used to store your Beanstalk deployment config, this runs before your deployment.

playwright.config is the config itself (you can name it whatever you want).I've used it to install additional packages that dont come preinstalled on the linux server.

below is the format for commands. AWS EC2 instances use yum for installing packages

commands:
  01_install_npm:
   command: sudo yum install 'your dependencies'

Config Nginx

The Nginx config folder structure looks like this

.platform\nginx\conf.d\nginx.config

Github Action for CD

This Github work flow automates deployment to AWS whenever main branch gets updated.

.github\workflows\aws.yml

name: Deploy master
on:
  push:
    branches:
    - main

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:

    - name: Checkout source code
      uses: actions/checkout@v2

    - name: Generate deployment package
      run: zip -r deploy.zip . -x '*.git*'

    - name: Deploy to EB
      uses: einaregilsson/beanstalk-deploy@v21
      with:
        aws_access_key: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
        aws_secret_key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
        application_name: {your app name}
        environment_name: {your environment name}
        version_label: ${{ github.sha }}
        version_description: ${{github.event.head_commit.message}}
        region: us-east-1
        deployment_package: deploy.zip
        use_existing_version_if_available: true
        wait_for_environment_recovery: 60