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Updated on January 2025

Deploy your Ruby on Rails app to Render.com

Use a blueprint to deploy your app along with a PostgreSQL database and Directus self hosted CMS

Juan Gallardo

Table of Contents

I’m assuming you have an account with Render. I’m deploying straight to production for this guide, but I recommend deploying to a staging environment instead. You can always deploy to a subdomain of yours and change the domain to production when you’re ready.

1. Create the deployment config file

databases:
  - name: <APP_DB_NAME>
    databaseName: <APP_DB_NAME>
    region: oregon
    user: <APP_DB_NAME>
    plan: basic-256mb

services:
  - type: web
    name: <APP_RAILS_NAME>
    domains:
      - <YOUR_VALUE>
    runtime: ruby
    plan: starter
    region: oregon
    buildCommand: "./bin/render-build.sh"
    startCommand: "bundle exec rails server"
    envVars:
      - key: DATABASE_URL
        fromDatabase:
          name: <APP_DB_NAME>
          property: connectionString
      - key: RAILS_MASTER_KEY
        sync: false
      - key: WEB_CONCURRENCY
        value: 2 # sensible default
  - type: web
    name: <APP_CMS_NAME>
    runtime: image
    env: docker
    plan: starter
    region: oregon
    image:
      url: docker.io/directus/directus:latest
    healthCheckPath: /server/health
    envVars:
      - key: DB_CLIENT
        value: pg
      - key: DB_CONNECTION_STRING
        fromDatabase:
          name: <APP_DB_NAME>
          property: connectionString
      - key: ADMIN_EMAIL
        sync: false
      - key: ADMIN_PASSWORD
        sync: false
      - key: SECRET
        generateValue: true
      - key: PUBLIC_URL
        value: <YOUR_VALUE>

Explanation:

Consult Render’s documentation for their database and web services plans and their costs
Our Rails web service and our CMS both get their database credentials straight from the database we are provisioning at the top of this file. Nifty, huh?
Un-synced environment variables (sync: false) are not populated (or present) in your Render dashboard. You’ll be prompted for them the first time you deploy your blueprint. If you don’t set them at that time, you must remember to set them later
Our Rails app depends on the environment variable RAILS_MASTER_KEY to decrypt its credentials. Copy this key from /config/master.key and paste in your Render dashboard
Our Directus web service gets its code from a public Docker repository
Unfortunately, it seems like you can’t specify the project to which each service belongs. So you’ll have to create projects to organize your Render resources and move them in once the blueprint is synced and the services are deployed

2. Ensure your `database.yml` file references the `DATABASE_URL` environment variable in production

# /config/database.yml

default: &default
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: unicode
  pool: <%= ENV.fetch("RAILS_MAX_THREADS") { 5 } %>

development:
  <<: *default
  database: app_development

test:
  <<: *default
  database: app_test

production:
  primary: &primary_production
    <<: *default
    url: <%= ENV['DATABASE_URL'] %>
  cache:
    <<: *primary_production
    database: app_production_cache
    migrations_paths: db/cache_migrate
  queue:
    <<: *primary_production
    database: app_production_queue
    migrations_paths: db/queue_migrate
  cable:
    <<: *primary_production
    database: app_production_cable
    migrations_paths: db/cable_migrate

3. Create your `render-build.sh` script

# /bin/render-build.sh
# exit on error
set -o errexit

bundle install
bundle exec rake assets:precompile
bundle exec rake assets:clean
bundle exec rake db:migrate

Deploy your Ruby on Rails app to Render.com

1. Create the deployment config file

2. Ensure your `database.yml` file references the `DATABASE_URL` environment variable in production

3. Create your `render-build.sh` script

3. Go on your Render dashboard and link a new blueprint. Point render to your GitHub repository and add your environment variables

5. Grab your web services URLs and create some CNAME records wherever you administer your domains. In my case, DigitalOcean

1. Create the deployment config file

2. Ensure your database.yml file references the DATABASE_URL environment variable in production

3. Create your render-build.sh script

3. Go on your Render dashboard and link a new blueprint. Point render to your GitHub repository and add your environment variables

5. Grab your web services URLs and create some CNAME records wherever you administer your domains. In my case, DigitalOcean

2. Ensure your `database.yml` file references the `DATABASE_URL` environment variable in production

3. Create your `render-build.sh` script