Railway•13mo ago

Point to a railway.json in a subfolder

I have a NX monorepo with multiple projects. Should I have one railway.app json in each project? How can I tell the service in railway.app which config file to use?

51 Replies

Percy•13mo ago

Project ID: N/A

misimilen•13mo ago

N/A

Brody•13mo ago

what kind of configurations are you needing to do in the railway.json files?

misimilen•13mo ago

I think I will need to tell railway to deploy our app using nodejs instead of Docker which its currently configured as because it autodetected a Dockerfile in the repo and I couldnt find anywhere to change that in the UI

Brody•13mo ago

if there is a dockerfile, the only way to change that would be to remove or rename it

misimilen•13mo ago

Hmm ok so railway.json isnt able to override it?

Brody•13mo ago

a Dockerfile will always be used, theres no way to change that besides removing or renaming

misimilen•13mo ago

Thanks, now it shows more things like start command and such 🙂 One last thing, is there a similar setting to fly.io's release_command which is suited to run for example database migrations? https://fly.io/docs/reference/configuration/#run-one-off-commands-before-releasing-a-deployment

Brody•13mo ago

at what point during the build or deployment would you want to run your desired command?

misimilen•13mo ago

Hmm I guess just before the app will be deployed. In our case it's a prisma migrations so we currently run prisma migrate deploy and if it's successful(exit code 0) only then the start cmd is ran (node build/index.js)

Brody•13mo ago

would running the migration during build work for you? like as the last step of the build before the image is published and then deployed

misimilen•13mo ago

Hmm yea I guess that could work. I will try! 😊

Brody•13mo ago

haha did you want me to show you how to set that up?

misimilen•13mo ago

well, for that a railway.json is needed right?

Brody•13mo ago

yeah it can be done in a railway.json or a nixpacks.toml

misimilen•13mo ago

Which is preferred?

Brody•13mo ago

well you mentioned having to point to a specific config file in a subfolder, and i dont think you can do that with a railway.json, but you can with a nixpacks.toml can you send me the build table at the top of the build logs and the command you want to run

misimilen•13mo ago

╔══════════════════ Nixpacks v1.17.0 ══════════════════╗

║ setup      │ nodejs_20, npm-9_x, openssl             ║

║──────────────────────────────────────────────────────║

║ install    │ npm ci                                  ║

║──────────────────────────────────────────────────────║

║ build      │ npm run build                           ║

║──────────────────────────────────────────────────────║

║ start      │ node ./packages/backend/build/index.js  ║

╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

╔══════════════════ Nixpacks v1.17.0 ══════════════════╗

║ setup      │ nodejs_20, npm-9_x, openssl             ║

║──────────────────────────────────────────────────────║

║ install    │ npm ci                                  ║

║──────────────────────────────────────────────────────║

║ build      │ npm run build                           ║

║──────────────────────────────────────────────────────║

║ start      │ node ./packages/backend/build/index.js  ║

╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

The migrate command I wish to run is npx prisma migrate deploy with CWD in ./packages/backend. I would also like to run this with node 18.

Brody•13mo ago

The migrate command I wish to run is npx prisma migrate deploy with CWD in ./packages/backend.

okay so what command will execute npx prisma migrate deploy in ./packages/backend without using cd

I would also like to run this with node 18.

set engines.node to 18 in your package.json

misimilen•13mo ago

Not sure I understand, but I guess we would have to put cd ./packages/backend && npx prisma migrate deploy somewhere, maybe in the railway.json file?

Brody•13mo ago

i think i said without using cd do you have a migrate script in your package.json

misimilen•13mo ago

no, but i could just add it like so "migrate-backend1": "cd ./packages/backend && npx prisma migrate deploy" right.

Brody•13mo ago

without using cd

misimilen•13mo ago

because we have a nx monorepo it's contained within that package

Brody•13mo ago

i know

misimilen•13mo ago

so it needs to be like executed from that context

Brody•13mo ago

i know how many apps do you have in the monorepo

misimilen•13mo ago

right now only a backend and frontend be we do got other services in other repos

Brody•13mo ago

how many railway services do you have

misimilen•13mo ago

just a postgres and a compute service im trying out railway so I set it up today

Brody•13mo ago

ignoring databases, if this repo contains two apps, you need two railway services, one service for the frontend, and one service for the backend

misimilen•13mo ago

the frontend is running at Vercel so currently it's only the one backend app I want to launch on railway

Brody•13mo ago

okay thanks for the clarification add a migrate:backend script to your package.json prisma migrate deploy then add this nixpacks.toml file to your project

[phases.migrate]
    dependsOn = ['build']
    cmds = ['npm run migrate:backend --prefix packages/backend']

[phases.migrate]
    dependsOn = ['build']
    cmds = ['npm run migrate:backend --prefix packages/backend']

misimilen•13mo ago

That's the ./package.json and not the ./packages/backend/package.json?

Brody•13mo ago

why not just tell railway to start from within /packages/backend??

misimilen•13mo ago

because we also have some common packages that's shared between frontend and backend so we need to build the backend from the root. it's how nx wants us to do it 🙂

Brody•13mo ago

pain then yes, package.json at the root

misimilen•13mo ago

wait a minute.. now I remember. The npm i has to be performed from the root because nx hoists shared packages from all packages in the monorepo but the build can be started from packages/backend without any problem even though it references packages outside.

Brody•13mo ago

well that doesnt really help, you cant tell railway what directory to use for each step, its a one time setting can you send your package.json the one from the root

misimilen•13mo ago

{
  "name": "monorepo",
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    "lint": "eslint .",
    "prettier": "prettier . --check",
    "prettier:fix": "prettier . --write",
    "check": "npm run lint && npm run prettier && npm run build",
    "dev": "concurrently --kill-others \"npm:dev:frontend\" \"npm:dev:backend\" \"npm:ngrok\"",
    "dev:frontend": "cd packages/frontend && npm run dev",
    "dev:backend": "cd packages/backend && npm run dev",
    "start": "npx nx run-many -t start",
    "build": "npx nx run-many -t build",
    "prisma:push": "cd packages/backend && npx prisma db push",
    "prisma:generate": "cd packages/backend && npx prisma generate",
    "prisma:migrate": "cd packages/backend && npx prisma migrate dev",
    "prisma:seed": "cd packages/backend && npx prisma db seed",
    "ngrok": "ngrok http --domain=XXXXXXX 3000"
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": ">=18"
  },
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "devDependencies": {
    "@types/node": "^20.5.1",
    "@typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin": "^6.4.0",
    "@typescript-eslint/parser": "^6.4.0",
    "concurrently": "^8.2.0",
    "eslint": "^8.47.0",
    "eslint-plugin-react-hooks": "^4.6.0",
    "eslint-plugin-react-refresh": "^0.4.3",
    "eslint-plugin-unicorn": "^48.0.1",
    "prettier": "3.0.2"
  },
  "workspaces": [
    "packages/*"
  ],
  "dependencies": {
    "nx": "^16.7.2",
    "type-fest": "^4.2.0",
    "typescript": "^5.1.6"
  }
}

{
  "name": "monorepo",
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    "lint": "eslint .",
    "prettier": "prettier . --check",
    "prettier:fix": "prettier . --write",
    "check": "npm run lint && npm run prettier && npm run build",
    "dev": "concurrently --kill-others \"npm:dev:frontend\" \"npm:dev:backend\" \"npm:ngrok\"",
    "dev:frontend": "cd packages/frontend && npm run dev",
    "dev:backend": "cd packages/backend && npm run dev",
    "start": "npx nx run-many -t start",
    "build": "npx nx run-many -t build",
    "prisma:push": "cd packages/backend && npx prisma db push",
    "prisma:generate": "cd packages/backend && npx prisma generate",
    "prisma:migrate": "cd packages/backend && npx prisma migrate dev",
    "prisma:seed": "cd packages/backend && npx prisma db seed",
    "ngrok": "ngrok http --domain=XXXXXXX 3000"
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": ">=18"
  },
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "devDependencies": {
    "@types/node": "^20.5.1",
    "@typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin": "^6.4.0",
    "@typescript-eslint/parser": "^6.4.0",
    "concurrently": "^8.2.0",
    "eslint": "^8.47.0",
    "eslint-plugin-react-hooks": "^4.6.0",
    "eslint-plugin-react-refresh": "^0.4.3",
    "eslint-plugin-unicorn": "^48.0.1",
    "prettier": "3.0.2"
  },
  "workspaces": [
    "packages/*"
  ],
  "dependencies": {
    "nx": "^16.7.2",
    "type-fest": "^4.2.0",
    "typescript": "^5.1.6"
  }
}

Brody•13mo ago

i see a lot of cd 😬

misimilen•13mo ago

all of the scripts in there are basically only used during dev that's problematic?

Brody•13mo ago

its not ideal / a proper solution are you aware of the prefix flag for npm?

misimilen•13mo ago

never heard of it. https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v7/commands/npm-prefix? this one?

Brody•13mo ago

yes remove all the cd stuff and move over to using --prefix let me know when thats done!

misimilen•13mo ago

hmm, it doesn't look like it's the one I linked to. --prefix seems to be a hidden and obscure flag according to this https://github.com/npm/cli/issues/1368 and should be avoided, some people say in the comments.

Brody•13mo ago

looks like everyone in that thread is just using it for the wrong reasons, but okay, does nx have any way to run commands in subdirectorys turbo does, surely nx must

misimilen•13mo ago

not sure tbh, im not fond of nx 😦

Brody•13mo ago

move to turbo!

misimilen•13mo ago

in the long run ya maybe 😄 for now im using nx, but I "gave up" and just started my app like this now and it almost seems to work: npm run prisma:deploy && node ./packages/backend/build/index.js

Brody•13mo ago

that works too

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Point to a railway.json in a subfolder