Deployment to AWS Elastic Beanstalk

In the previous parts of this tutorial series, we learned how to set up a JSON REST API using NodeJS, Express, and Typescript. In this final part, we will cover how to deploy our API to AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

What is AWS Elastic Beanstalk?

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a service from Amazon Web Services that makes it easy to deploy and scale web applications and services. It automates the process of setting up infrastructure, deploying code, and managing the application environment, allowing developers to focus on writing code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

Getting Started with Elastic Beanstalk

Before deploying our API to Elastic Beanstalk, we need to set up some prerequisites. First, we need an AWS account and the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) installed on our local machine. We also need to have the Elastic Beanstalk Command Line Interface (EB CLI) installed.

Configuring our API for Deployment

Before deploying our API to Elastic Beanstalk, we need to make a few changes to our code and project configuration. We need to add a Procfile to the root of our project, which tells Elastic Beanstalk how to start our application. The Procfile should contain a single line that specifies the command to start our server. For example:

web: npm start

We also need to add a .ebignore file to the root of our project to specify which files and directories should be excluded from the deployment package. This is similar to a .gitignore file and helps to keep our deployment package small and efficient.

node_modules
.env

Deploying to Elastic Beanstalk

Once our project is configured for deployment, we can use the EB CLI to create a new application and environment on Elastic Beanstalk and deploy our code. We can use the following commands to accomplish this:

eb init -p Node.js
eb create
eb deploy

The eb init command initializes our project for use with Elastic Beanstalk by creating a new application and environment, the eb create command creates a new environment and deploys our code, and the eb deploy command updates the environment with our latest code changes.

Conclusion

Deploying a NodeJS API to AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a simple and straightforward process that allows us to easily scale our application and take advantage of the benefits of cloud infrastructure. By following the steps outlined in this article, we can quickly and efficiently deploy our API and focus on building great software without having to worry about managing servers and infrastructure.

I hope this tutorial series has been helpful in learning how to create a JSON REST API with NodeJS, Express, and Typescript, and how to deploy it to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Now, go forth and build amazing things with your new knowledge!