Staging environment

What it is not:

• Staging is not a Git thing. It's not a branch or anything GitHub related.

What is it:

• It's an environment - imagine servers, databases, third party APIs, OAuth, etc
• Staging environment is a mirror to production environment, BUT does not interact with production environment
• Its a clone of your app, that is used to test everything before a real user can touch it

• The only time there is some resource sharing between staging and production, is when you want to copy data from production to staging to have more relevant data set for staging

Why do we use it?

• You want to make sure your app will work in production from the get go. But your local dev environment is very different from production.
• Some issues can not be tested in dev env:
  • Config variables are different
  • some features (esp. native mobile) can not be tested in dev env (geo location, camera, ...)
  • you want your stakeholder to review the feature before it goes public
  • CORS
  • issues with hosting
  • Some 3rd party APIs do not have localhost solutions

Deploying to staging environment on Heroku:

1. Login to Heroku at https://id.heroku.com/login

2. Select tieme-ndo-backend-pipeline

   

3. Ask your team if anyone is using the staging server you want to use

4. If the server is free, select it

   

5. Select Deploy tab

   

6. Scroll down to Manual Deploy and choose your feature branch you want to deploy (❗ this will not be Master ❗)