how to run a simple file on heroku

Question

say I\'ve got my rails app on github and am deploying the github repo on heroku.

I\'ve got a situation where I have a simple text file with bunch of words (it is in my g

Answer 1

Put your ruby script in a bin directory and git push it to Heroku. Now you can execute a shell command in the heroku console.

For example, if your Ruby script is bin/foo.rb, you can run the following command in the Heroku console:

`ruby bin/foo.rb`

Note the use of backticks.

Answer 2

cd /path/to/my/local/repository
heroku console
require 'my_word_importing_script'

Failing that, try a simple Sinatra application as importer.rb?

require 'sinatra'
require 'sequel'

configure do
  // connect to the database with sequel
end

get '/import/a-long-unguessable-url-fdsjklgfuiwfnjfkdsklfds' do
  words = YAML.load(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "my_list_of_words.yaml"))
  words.each do |word|
    // Your logic for inserting into the database with sequel
  end
end

Hitting http://example.com/import/a-long-unguessable-url-fdsjklgfuiwfnjfkdsklfds in your browser would kick off the import. Handy for an external cron task.

You would also need a config.ru file in the repo:

require 'importer'
run Sinatra::Application

Answer 3

Since you're talking about a Rails app on Heroku, how about using rails runner:

heroku run bundle exec rails runner ./path/to/script.rb -a <your-app>

Have a look at the RailsGuides for rails runner for more details.

---

Alternatively, turn that script into a rake task if runner is not your cup of tea (eg, for recurring tasks).

Answer 4

With cedar, you can run bash:

heroku run bash

Answer 5

If you want to run arbitrary local Ruby files on Heroku, check out the blog post at

http://www.22ideastreet.com/debug/run-local-scripts-on-heroku

There are some things to watch out for (long run times, etc.) but it might be useful if you have a file that you haven't checked in that you want to test or run on a Heroku instance.