Using rails sync gem with Faye and Thin in production mode on Heroku

Question

I'm trying to set up the 'sync' gem to enable real time updates in my rails app. This uses Faye as a real time push service and thin as the webserver.

I"m VERY new to this. So any advice is appreciated.

I have this working on my local server, but don't know how to get it working in production mode on heroku. This is my setup:

In my gemfile:

gem 'faye'
gem 'thin', require: false
gem 'sync'

In my root folder, I have a sync.ru file

require "bundler/setup"
require "yaml"
require "faye"
require "sync"

Faye::WebSocket.load_adapter 'thin'

Sync.load_config(
  File.expand_path("../config/sync.yml", __FILE__),
  ENV["RAILS_ENV"] || "development"
)

run Sync.pubsub_app

In my config/sync.yml

# Faye
development:
  server: "http://localhost:9292/faye"
  adapter_javascript_url: "http://localhost:9292/faye/faye.js" 
  auth_token: DEVELOPMENT_SECRET_TOKEN
  adapter: "Faye"
  async: true

production:
  server: "http://my_app_name.com/faye"
  adapter_javascript_url: "http://localhost:9292/faye/faye.js" 
  adapter: "Faye"
  auth_token: "1b7329869f09aa98499258dfe9c377cdd2c89c05b99069176445942575348da0"
  async: true

On my local server, I simply run:

rackup sync.ru -E production

This starts the thin web server and real time updates work in my app.

How can I get this working on Heroku?

I've tried adding the following to my procfile (no idea if this is the right thing to do)

web:  bundle exec thin -p $PORT -e $RACK_ENV -R sync.ru start

When I try and load my app, my browser displays the following text:

Sure you're not looking for /faye ?

And my heroku log reads:

app[web.1]: Starting process with command 'bundle exec thin -p 57204 -e production -R sync.ru start'
app[web.1]: Listening on 0.0.0.0:57204
app[web.1]: Maximum connections set to 1024
app[web.1]: Thin web server (v.1.6.3 codename Protein Powder)
heroku[web.1]: State changed from up to starting
heroku[web.1]: Process exited with status 137
heroku[web.1]: Process exited with status 0
heroku[web.1]: Starting process with command 'rackup sync.ru -E production'
heroku[web.1]: Stopping all processes with SIGTERM
heroku[web.1]: Process exited with status 137
heroku[web.1]: Stopping process with SIGKILL
heroku[web.1]: State changed from starting to crashed
heroku[web.1]: State changed from crashed to start
heroku[web.1]: Error R10 (Boot timeout) Web process failed to bind to $PORT within 60 sec of launch

Answer 1

I deploy two heroku apps. One is thin server for Sync pub/sub system which is deployed with your Procfile:

# this Procfile contains only the following line.
web:  bundle exec thin -p $PORT -e $RACK_ENV -R sync.ru start

And the other one is default web server deployed without Procfile.

Also, I set the server and adapter_javascript_url params to point to my thin server in sync.yml.

production:
  server: "http://xxx-sync.herokuapp.com/faye"
  adapter_javascript_url: "http://xxx-sync.herokuapp.com/faye/faye.js"
  adapter: "Faye"
  auth_token: <=% ENV["SYNC_AUTH_TOKEN"] %>
  async: true

This approach work with HTTP protocol for me.

The message "Sure you're not looking for /faye ?" shows that thin server works fine.

Answer 2

Have struggled a bit to get it work on staging/production. Posting my answer in case if someone is not not on heroku but on private server like EC2/rackspace etc.

You need to start the server with below command

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rackup sync.ru -E production