Deploying spring boot application to heroku – error message “No web processes running”

I created a spring boot web application (in IntelliJ IDEA), which runs locally without problems.

I then built an artifact (Build -> Build Artifacts… -> my_app:jar -> Build), which created a jar file in directory “out”.

I tried to deploy the app to heroku following exactly the steps described in this walkthrough by heroku: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/deploying-spring-boot-apps-to-heroku

Note: the walkthrough does not mention a Procfile so I didn’t create one.

When opening the app’s address in the browser I faced an “Application error”.

The logs show that building the app was successful but there are apparently “No web processes running”:

2020-02-06T20:42:19.262364+00:00 app[api]: Release v1 created by user [e-mail] 2020-02-06T20:42:19.598724+00:00 app[api]: Release v2 created by user [e-mail] 2020-02-06T20:42:19.262364+00:00 app[api]: Initial release by user [e-mail] 2020-02-06T20:42:19.598724+00:00 app[api]: Enable Logplex by user [e-mail] 2020-02-06T20:46:11.000000+00:00 app[api]: Build started by user [e-mail] 2020-02-06T20:46:56.626428+00:00 app[api]: Release v3 created by user [e-mail] 2020-02-06T20:46:56.626428+00:00 app[api]: Deploy 93b6dfea by user [e-mail] 2020-02-06T20:47:04.000000+00:00 app[api]: Build succeeded 2020-02-06T20:48:22.485742+00:00 heroku[router]: at=error code=H14 desc=”No web processes running” method=GET path=”/” host=my-app.herokuapp.com request_id=22e30a92-5094-4f8b-a51c-3f21177b19dc fwd=”95.88.203.176″ dyno= connect= service= status=503 bytes= protocol=https

I checked whether a dyno was running using the following command:

heroku ps

Result:

No dynos on ⬢ infinite-sky-81114

I then ran the following command to start a dyno:

heroku ps:scale web=1

Result:

Scaling dynos… ! ▸ Couldn’t find that process type (web).

So the application doesn’t run because there is no dyno – but I am not able to start a dyno.

How can I make this work?

Answer

Assuming you are using JAR, Procfile will be created by default. Are you sure your web dyno is still running ? If you are using cli, you could check using heroku ps to see what is the status. If it says no dynos you can scale up using heroku ps:scale web=1 and try heroku open to launch app.

If your using WAR you can follow https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/war-deployment and yes you need the Procfile.

Also while running the spring boot application on standalone tomcat don’t forget to follow steps here https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/2.1.10.RELEASE/reference/html/howto-traditional-deployment.html

Here are some screen shots that I took while doing spring boot heroku integration.

ProcFile

Pom (with WebRunner plugin) Demo Application (Note the use of SpringBootServletInitializer). You will get 404 if you don’t use it.

Home page

Heroku logs