Getting Started

So far, we've just been playing around with the web applications on our local machines. Let's change that.

Deno Deploy

Deno Deploy is a platform for deploying Deno applications. It is a serverless platform, meaning that you do not need to worry about the server where your application is running. Instead, you can focus on developing your application. They offer a free tier, for personal and non-commercial projects, which we use here.

Serverless web development is discussed more in the course Designing and Building Scalable Web Applications.

We note that there are also alternatives to Deno Deploy, including Vercel, Heroku, and Netlify. They do not, however, support some of the functionality that we'll explore soon. It is also possible to host an application locally, or on a server that you control.

Creating a project

To create a Deno Deploy project, we need to sign up to the system. This is done through https://dash.deno.com/, which is the dashboard for Deno Deploy. Signing up requires a GitHub account.

Once you've signed up, you are directed to the path https://dash.deno.com/projects, where you can create a new project. Click the "New Project" button.

When you click the "New Project" button, you are shown a page with templates for creating a new project. Select the "Create an empty project" template by clicking "Create blank project".

This creates a new project with a random name. In our case, as shown below, the name for the project is epic-moth-42.

Installing deployctl

To deploy our application, we need to install the deployctl, which is a command line tool for deploying software.

To install the tool, run the command deno install -Arf https://deno.land/x/deploy/deployctl.ts.

deno install -Arf https://deno.land/x/deploy/deployctl.ts
...
Successfully installed deployctl
/path-to-user/.deno/bin/deployctl

Now, once the deployctl command has been installed, we can check that it works.

deployctl
deployctl 1.8.2
Command line tool for Deno Deploy.

To deploy a local script:
  deployctl deploy --project=helloworld ./main.ts

To deploy a remote script:
  deployctl deploy --project=helloworld https://deno.land/x/deploy/examples/hello.js

SUBCOMMANDS:
    deploy    Deploy a script with static files to Deno Deploy
    upgrade   Upgrade deployctl to the given version (defaults to latest)
    logs      View logs for the given project

Generating a deploy token

To deploy software, we need to have a personal deploy token. Go to the Deno Deploy account settings page at https://dash.deno.com/account#access-tokens and click the "New Access Token" button.

When you click on the "New Access Token" button, you are asked for a description of the token. Enter a description, such as "Personal token for WSD course". Then click the "Generate" button.

Once you've created the token, it is shown in the list of tokens. Copy the token to your clipboard, as you'll need it in the next part.

Note! When you click done, you no longer can see the token, so make sure to copy it to your clipboard. If you lose the token, you can always create a new one.