Deployment

After creating your application you'll need to be able to deploy it. Let's take a look at a few ways to deploy your application.

How to do it...

1. The first fundamental step before deployment is building your project. To build your application, run the build command:

   $ ember build
   

2. This command builds the contents of the project in the /dist folder. To build your project for production, you'll need to use the -prod argument:

   $ ember build -prod
   

3. If you need, you can designate the default output folder:

   $ ember build –prod –o<directory>
   

Building your application for production will automatically minify your files as well as fingerprint them. This does not occur when your environment is set up for development, which is set by default.

The /dist folder has everything that your web server needs. At this point, to deploy your application, all you need to do is copy the contents of the /dist folder to your web server.

Tip

Ember CLI Deploy

Another great way to deploy your Ember application is to use the Ember add-on called Ember CLI Deploy. This add-on helps you deploy your Ember application to a number of different services. It has a very active community behind it so you can expect frequent updates. As your Ember applications grows you may want to take a look at this. You can find more information about Ember CLI deploy here: https://github.com/ember-cli/ember-cli-deploy.

Deploying to Firebase

Firebase is a backend service that can handle data storage, user authentication, static hosting, and more. For this example we'll be using Firebase as a way to host our Ember application.

1. Sign up for an account with Firebase. This can be done at http://www.firebase.com.
2. Next, install the firebase-tools:

   $ npm install –g firebase-tools
   

3. After you have a project created and you're ready to deploy, run the firebase init command in the root of the folder:

   $ firebase init
   

   After running this command, you'll be asked a few questions. It will first ask you to sign in to your Firebase account. Enter your credentials to continue. Then, it will ask for the name of your Firebase application. Lastly, it will ask for the name of your app's public directory. In most cases, this should be /dist.

4. Edit the firebase.json file and add some rewrite rules:

   {
     "firebase": "my-new-app",
     "public": "dist",
     "rewrites": [{
       "source": "**",
       "destination": "/index.html"
     }],
   }

   This is needed to help with navigation in the application. Change my-new-app to the name of your app as well.

5. All that's left is to deploy to Firebase:

   $ firebase deploy
   

How it works...

The Ember CLI build process is compiled using the Broccoli asset pipeline and the build tool itself. It takes all the files and minifies, fingerprints, and organizes them in the /dist folder so that it is ready to be deployed.

Many services exist that can host static files. You can use Firebase or just host it in your own Nginx or Apache server after building it for production.