Google Cloud - Run

Google Cloud Run is a fully managed compute platform for deploying and scaling containerized applications.

Requirements

• Emails with Sendgrid

• Payments with Stripe (if payments are enabled)

• File Storage (Google Cloud Storage is preferable)

• Database (MongoDB Atlas hosted at GCP or Google SQL are preferable)

Docker Files

Google Cloud Run requires the application to use docker, so add those two files to the backend folder.

backend/Dockerfile

FROM node:14
WORKDIR /app
COPY . /app
RUN npm install
RUN npm run build
CMD ["node", "./dist/server.js"]

backend/.dockerignore

node_modules
npm-debug.log
Dockerfile*
docker-compose*
.dockerignore
.git
.gitignore
.env
*/bin
*/obj
README.md
LICENSE
.vscode

Google Cloud Project

Go to https://cloud.google.com/ and create an account.

Create a new project for the production environment. To create a staging environment the steps are the same.

Enable billing

The project needs the billing enabled: https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-project.

Google SDK

Install the https://cloud.google.com/sdk.

Sign in to your account calling gcloud auth login.

Deploy

The first step is to build the image with Google Cloud Build.

Replace:

• PROJECT-ID: By your Google Cloud project ID.

• APPLICATION-ID: By the name of your application.

gcloud builds submit --tag gcr.io/PROJECT-ID/APPLICATION-ID 

On your first try, you will receive an error warning you to enable the Google Build API, so please do it and try again.

After the image is built, you can deploy it to Google Cloud Run:

gcloud run deploy --image gcr.io/PROJECT-ID/APPLICATION-ID --platform managed --project PROJECT-ID

You'll be prompted to:

• Enable the API: Select yes.

• Region: Select the one you have the database hosted.

• Allow unauthenticated invocations: Select yes.

Create deployment scripts

You may want to create a deployment script.

backend/package.json

{
  ...
  "scripts": {
    ...
    "deploy:staging": "gcloud builds submit --tag gcr.io/PROJECT-ID-STAGING/APPLICATION-ID --project PROJECT-ID-STAGING && gcloud run deploy backend --image gcr.io/PROJECT-ID-STAGING/APPLICATION-ID --platform managed --project PROJECT-ID-STAGING --memory=2Gi --region us-central1",
    "deploy:production": "gcloud builds submit --tag gcr.io/PROJECT-ID-PRODUCTION/APPLICATION-ID --project PROJECT-ID-PRODUCTION && gcloud run deploy backend --image gcr.io/PROJECT-ID-PRODUCTION/APPLICATION-ID --platform managed --project PROJECT-ID-PRODUCTION --memory=2Gi --region us-central1"
  },
  ...
}

Environment Variables

Go to the Google Cloud Run console.

Select the service you just deployed.

Click on Edit & Deploy a new Revision.

Go to variables and add the environment variables.

The environment variables are the same you set on the setup but related to production, with a few changes.

Backend

GOOGLE_CLOUD_PLATFORM_CREDENTIALS

You DON'T need to specify the GOOGLE_CLOUD_PLATFORM_CREDENTIALS because you are deploying inside the Google Cloud platform. But you have to make sure the Compute Engine default service account contains the following permissions:

• Service Account Token Creator

• Storage Admin

https://console.cloud.google.com/iam-admin/iamconsole.cloud.google.com

FRONTEND_URL and FRONTEND_URL_WITH_SUBDOMAIN

Set this to your hosted frontend URL (if you have one already).

BACKEND_URL

Set this one with the URL you received after the first deployment. Don't forget to add the /api suffix. It will be something like https://APPLICATION-ID-RANDOM-CODE-uc.a.run.app/api.