Deploying a full-stack web app with a database

This guide is for deploying full-stack node apps with a React/SPA frontend and an Express backend using a PostgreSQL database — e.g. the movie-facts repo.

Move pg to dependencies

Render removes devDependencies during build, so make sure the pg package is in dependencies.

npm install --save pg

If you install it in devDependencies (e.g. with -D), your build may fail with a confusing error like “can’t install pg”.

Update knexfile for production

In your knexfile.js, set up the production config to use the database env variables:

  production: {
    client: 'postgresql',
    connection: {
      host: process.env.DB_HOST,
      port: process.env.DB_PORT || 5432,
      database: process.env.DB_NAME,
      user: process.env.DB_USER,
      password: process.env.DB_PASSWORD,
      ssl: { rejectUnauthorized: false }
    },
    pool: {
      min: 2,
      max: 10,
    },
  },

Add custom build and start scripts

Add these scripts to your package.json:

"render:build": "npm install && npm run build && npm prune --omit=dev && NODE_ENV='production' npm run knex migrate:latest",
"render:start": "node dist/server.js"

Sign in to Render and create a Web Service

Go to render.com and sign in.

Click “New > Web Service”.

Authenticate your GitHub account if prompted.

You should see a list of repos to choose from. Select the one you want to deploy.

Choose branch and runtime

• Choose Node as the environment
• Select the branch you want to deploy from (Render will auto-deploy from this branch)
• Choose the Free plan!

Then set your commands in the Render service settings:

• Build Command: npm run render:build
• Start Command: npm run render:start

Click Deploy Web Service (Don't worry if you see a Failed message for the deploy at this point)

Create a PostgreSQL database

From the Render dashboard, go to “New > PostgreSQL” and create a database using any name you like the default settings for the rest.

Once it’s provisioned, open the Info tab and take note of the following values:

• Hostname
• Database
• Username
• Password

Set environment variables

You can add env vars while creating the service or later from the Environment tab. Click the add button for each new key.

Set the following keys with the values you copied earlier

• DB_HOST
• DB_NAME
• DB_PASSWORD
• DB_USER

You can also add API keys and other secrets here. Where you are finished, click "Save, rebuild and deploy"

Seed your database

To run seeds on initial deploy, update your render build script temporarily in the settings:

npm run render:build && NODE_ENV='production' npm run knex seed:run

This will trigger another deployment which runs your seeds

After your seeds have run, reset your build script part so it doesn’t run on every deploy.

npm run render:build

That’s it!

Once your deploy completes, Render will show you the URL to your live site 🎉