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Clever Cloud 💎

Clever Cloud is a PaaS provider that enables you to start apps quickly using git while they manage the infrastructure, scalability, and run lifetime.

Prerequisites​

Before you get started, if you don't already have these, you'll need to create:

caution

As with any PaaS service you should check the pricing before continuing. Clever Cloud has a transparent pricing policy depending on the runtime type and size, see the Clever Cloud Pricing Page.

You might be able to do everything in the console, but for this tutorial, we will use the Clever Cloud CLI, so you'll have to install it on your computer.

Then log in running:

clever login

Deploying​

1. Create the Clever Cloud application​

Clever Cloud has many available runtime that are optimized for the type of application you want to deploy. Unfortunately, dart is not yet one of them.

In order to deploy those type of applications, there is a Docker runtime available, and we will this one.

So, first things first, lets create a Docker runtime:

tip

Make sure you are at the root of your project and not in build, as this command will produce a .clever.json file in the current folder.

clever create --type docker <app-name> --region <zone> --org <org>

For example, if the project's name is api and you want it to be deployed in Paris (par), you can run:

clever create --type docker api --region par

The <org> argument is optional if you only have one Clever Cloud organization.

note

For a full list of all the available zones refer to Clever Cloud's zones list.

As a result, you should have Your application has been successfully created!

If you check your project's file, you'll find a .clever.json file containing something like this:

{
  "apps": [
    {
      "app_id": "app_<some_id>",
      "org_id": "<org>",
      "deploy_url": "https://<some_src>.services.clever-cloud.com/app_<some_id>.git",
      "name": "<app-name>",
      "alias": "<app-name>"
    }
  ]
}
note

You can add this file to your git repository.

tip

By default, the runtime is scaled to XS, which is 1 CPU / 1Gio RAM, if you want to scale it down for testing purposes you can use the following:

clever scale --flavor nano

Giving the output App rescaled successfully

2. Deploy your API to Clever Cloud​

As Clever Cloud uses git we don't have to compile binaries and share them, Clever Cloud handles that for us, making the deployment steps as followed:

(0. send the sources)

  1. build the app
  2. run the app
note

Clever Cloud listens on port 8080 by default which is also Dart Frog's default port, it works out of the box!

In order to tell Clever Cloud how to build our project, we will need to create a Dockerfile, because the one created by dart_frog build is a built item and not sent to Clever Cloud with git.

Here is the Dockerfile you can add at the root of your project.

# This stage will compile sources to get the build folder
FROM dart:stable AS build

# Install the dart_frog cli from pub.dev
RUN dart pub global activate dart_frog_cli

# Set the working directory
WORKDIR /app

# Copy Dependencies in our working directory
COPY pubspec.* /app/
COPY routes /app/routes
# Uncomment the following line if you are serving static files.
# COPY --from=build public /app/public

# Add all of your custom directories here, for example if you have a "models" directory:
# COPY models /app/models

# Get dependencies
RUN dart pub get

# 📦 Create a production build
RUN dart_frog build

# Compile the server to get the executable
RUN dart compile exe /app/build/bin/server.dart -o /app/build/bin/server

# Build minimal serving image from AOT-compiled `/server` and required system
# libraries and configuration files stored in `/runtime/` from the build stage.
FROM scratch

COPY --from=build /runtime/ /
COPY --from=build /app/build/bin/server /app/bin/server
# Uncomment the following line if you are serving static files.
# COPY --from=build /app/build/public /public/

# Expose the server port (useful for binding)
EXPOSE 8080

# Run the server
CMD ["/app/bin/server"]
tip

If you already have a Dockerfile you can rename it and specify to Clever Cloud that the docker file to run is not Dockerfile:

clever env set CC_DOCKERFILE <the  name of your file>

Add the newly created Dockerfile to git via git add Dockerfile, commit and then run:

clever deploy

Your source code will be sent to Clever Cloud.

warning

Consider Clever Cloud like a new remote (from a git point of view) and clever deploy a git push.

And watch the magic happening

App is brand new, no commits on remote yet
New local commit to push is XXX (from refs/heads/main)
Pushing source code to Clever Cloud…
Your source code has been pushed to Clever Cloud.
Waiting for deployment to start…
Deployment started (deployment_XXX)
Waiting for application logs…
...
...
Deployment successful

3. Enjoy your API on Clever Cloud! 🎉​

You have successfully built and deployed your API to Clever Cloud

To access your app you can go to

https://app-\<your app id\>.cleverapps.io/

tip

Your app's id is in the .clever.json file.

Please note that the app id is app_XX and the url is app-XX (underscore in file, hyphen in url).

Additional Resources​