使用ClearDB在Heroku上部署PHP Web App

Question

So over the last few weeks I've been developing a PHP web app, and now that it's near completion I want to try to deploy it on Heroku. I followed the tutorial on scotch.io , and it was fairly intuitive. Until I got to the database connection. I'll walk you through the steps I took, and maybe someone can point out where I've gone wrong.

Before I start I must mention I'm using PDO for the database connection and subsequent SQL queries. The scotch.io tutorial does not use PDO, so that's why I got derailed. Additionally, my app is live at the following URL: https://fathomless-bastion-62027.herokuapp.com/index.php

I got up to Step 11: Importing Local DB Tables into Heroku DB. I ran the heroku config | grep CLEARDB_DATABASE_URL heroku config | grep CLEARDB_DATABASE_URL command, obtained my cleardb URL, and as per this other scotch.io tutorial , I made my mysql command that was used to redirect output from my exported sql file from phpmyadmin.

I'm not sure if I did it right though, because if I go to ClearDB from the Heroku admin panel, and navigate to "Dev & Production Edition", nothing shows up. But if I were to try rerunning the mysql command from Step 11, the cli gives me an error saying my tables already exist. I don't know, maybe I'm being paranoid, I've been trying to fix this for an hour+.

Now we get to where the wheels started to fall off the wagon. The tutorial says we have to go update some database.php file, but I don't have one. As I said above, I'm using PDO, and the way I learned PHP (took a web dev class last year college), all of our database connections were done with PHP snippets in our main files, so that's the way I did it for my app. You can view my codebase HERE .

So, I tried to establish the database connection in my index.php file based on Step 12 from the Scotch tutorial, and based my code on some other SO posts about ClearDB and PDO. This is what I arrived at, and I don't really have any way of testing it. Also, this is located in my main index.php file, if that helps you pinpoint where I've gone wrong.

<?php 
//Get Heroku ClearDB connection information
$cleardb_url      = parse_url(getenv("CLEARDB_DATABASE_URL"));
$cleardb_server   = $cleardb_url["host"];
$cleardb_username = $cleardb_url["user"];
$cleardb_password = $cleardb_url["pass"];
$cleardb_db       = substr($cleardb_url["path"],1);

try {
    $pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=".$cleardb_server."; dbname=".$cleardb_db, $cleardb_username, $cleardb_password);
    $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
    $pdo = null;
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    print "Error!: " . $e->getMessage() . "<br/>";
    die();
}
?> 

This looks correct, though clearly it isn't because when you try to go to my web app, again accessible here: https://fathomless-bastion-62027.herokuapp.com/index.php , nothing shows up. And opening up Chrome Dev tools, I get a 500 ISE, Failed to Load Resources. I have a feeling my issue lies with my app's inability to connect to the database. Apologies if what I'm asking seems trivial - this web app is more for my own learning purposes and if you more experienced PHP devs take a look at the git repo, you're probably going to find many glaringly obvious mistakes. They're bound to happen though, I'm fairly new to this.

If you've made it this far in my post and are able to help me out, I cannot thank you enough. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you!

-Dan

Answer 1

500 are PHP errors. You really need to check your error log file. If you don't know where the log file is located, use the phpinfo() command to dump your environment configuration and look for "error_log". My guess is you are not parsing CLEARDB_DATABASE_URL correctly, but, not knowing the value of it, I can't say what is wrong.