Deploying Create-React-App with Rails API on Heroku - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm having an issue getting my react /rails app to work on heroku. I've managed to get it deployed and the rails server starts but I'm not seeing my react app. I feel like I'm close but can't figure out what's missing.
So my process is currently to run npm run build locally from the client directory which builds a 'build' directory in client. I then commit the results of the build and push to Heroku with git push heroku master.
I then navigate to the heroku app in a browser where I'm only getting a blank white page which is an index file the I manually copied from the build dir to public. I'm not sure if the index file is correct but I just wanted to make sure i could hit something.
Ultimately, I would like to just push the repo and it automatically run the build. I've seen this mentioned various places but I always get a react-script does not exist error when I run npm run build on the server.
My configuration is as follows:
basic structure of app
/app - root of Rails app
/client - root of React app
/public - does display index page
root/client/package.json
{
"name": "qc_react",
"version": "0.1.0",
"private": true,
"devDependencies": {
"react-scripts": "^0.8.4"
},
"dependencies": {
"react": "^15.4.1",
"react-dom": "^15.4.1",
"react-router": "^3.0.0"
},
"scripts": {
"start": "react-scripts start",
"build": "react-scripts build",
"test": "react-scripts test --env=jsdom",
"eject": "react-scripts eject"
},
"cacheDirectories": [
"node_modules",
"client/node_modules"
],
"proxy": "${API_URL}:${PORT}/v1/"
}
root/package.json
{
"name": "web",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "This repo contains a web application codebase. Read instructions on how to install.",
"main": "index.js",
"scripts": {
"build": "cd client" # not sure what to put here but this gets me past build failure
},
"repository": {
"type": "git",
"url": "git+ssh://myrepo.git"
},
"author": "",
"license": "ISC",
"homepage": "https://myhomepage#readme"
}
Procfile
api: bundle exec puma -C config/puma.rb
Buildpacks
1. https://github.com/mars/create-react-app-buildpack.git
2. heroku/ruby
config/puma.rb
workers Integer(ENV['WEB_CONCURRENCY'] || 2)
threads_count = Integer(ENV['RAILS_MAX_THREADS'] || 5)
threads threads_count, threads_count
preload_app!
rackup DefaultRackup
port ENV['PORT'] || 3001
environment ENV['RACK_ENV'] || 'development'
on_worker_boot do
# Worker specific setup for Rails 4.1+
# See: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/deploying-rails-applications-with-the-puma-web-server#on-worker-boot
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection
end

Answer 1

That's because Rails is serving static files (including index.html) from /public. But your React app bundle is located inside /client/build. After build you need to copy these files back to Rails folder. The easiest way to do this is to add some scripts to your package.json:
"scripts": {
...
"deploy": "cp -a build/. public",
"heroku-postbuild": "npm run build && npm run deploy"
},
heroku-postbuild is executed automatically by Heroku after all dependencies are installed, just like normal postinstall hook.
Be careful with the paths for cp command. Your setup with 2 different package.json files is too complex. I recommend to use a single package.json inside root and set all paths accordingly.

Answer 2

So I finally found the solution I was looking for. My code base has the following structure.
app/
client/
public/
...
I'm currently building my client solution as #yeasayer suggested above. After building and deploying my react project to the public folder in my rails api, I added the following to my routes:
... # api routes ...
get '/*path', to: 'react#index'
Then I created a react_controller and added the following contents:
class ReactController < ActionController::Base
def index
render :file => 'public/index.html', :layout => false
end
end
Now any routes not caught by the api routes, will render the react app. I'm not sure why others don't use this structure instead of using react_on_rails or some other plugin to achieve the same result. This setup is a lot simpler than dealing with these other solutions but I'd like to hear any thoughts on why this solution is not a good idea.

Answer 3

I see you are using the create-react-app-buildpack, but I think your issue is that your react app is in a subdirectory. Buildpacks only get executed if heroku can detect a matching application in the directory and since your package.json in your root does not match create-react-app-buildpack I don't think it is being used.
What you might try is removing the root package.json and using this sub directory buildpack so you can specify the locations of each buildpack directory