How to deploy 'create-react-app' to Heroku with custom back-end api

Question

I'm trying to deploy a 'create-react-app' project to Heroku. I used the Heroku Create-React-App boilerplate and followed another tutorial on setting up a backend api for connecting to my custom server.js file.

When I deploy to Heroku, the build runs fine but my app still will not connect to my server.js file.

I assume this is either because the proxy property in my package.json is supposed to point to the same port defined in my server.js file (which Heroku would assign automatically, which I don't know how to check) or perhaps my server.js file isn't running at all.

Been having a very hard time finding any resources that properly explain how to deploy a 'create-react-app' with a custom back-end (server.js).

package.json:

{
    "name": "my-app",
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "private": true,
    "proxy": "https://localhost:5000",
    "dependencies": {
      "axios": "^0.17.1",
      "body-parser": "^1.18.2",
      "md5": "^2.2.1",
      "mongodb": "^3.0.2",
      "react": "^16.2.0",
      "react-dom": "^16.2.0",
      "react-scripts": "1.1.1",
      "react-router": "^4.2.0",
      "react-router-dom": "^4.2.2"
    },
    "scripts": {
      "start": "react-scripts start",
      "start:server":"node server.js",
      "build": "react-scripts build",
      "test": "react-scripts test --env=jsdom",
      "eject": "react-scripts eject"
    }
}

Line in server.js where I set the port:

const port = process.env.PORT || 5000;

Answer 1

I was able to deploy my app to Heroku by following this tutorial from fullstackreact.com and studying the accompanying repo.

Basically, I needed to bundle my client-side code and then make sure my server.js file was serving that bundle as a static file. I'm sure there's other ways to go about this, like running concurrent scripts for the webpack-dev-server and the backend api (server.js), but this worked for me without much headaches.