Not firing at expected time?

[mkitchingh]

Thank you for the simple deployment! You made it very simple. I set everything up today, and it seems like it is working. I configured the mailgun account, verified it, etc. All looks good. I added 2 reservations to the app, and the first one should have fired at 8:10 central time tonight. Nothing seems to have happened. It is still sitting there. No email, and no sign that it has done anything. Any ideas? Is there somewhere I can see some logs?

[pw10n]

So I originally only forked this repo to change the email backend to Mailgun. There should be no changes to any of the other functionality so if the checkin itself is not happening, there may be a problem with the base code which was not modified here.

You can check the logs in Heroku by going to your application dashboard, click More (top right) and "View logs". You should see some sidekiq processes being kicked off. If not, make sure you have two dynos: one "web" which is responsible for the web frontend and "worker" which is responsible for performing the check-in and email tasks.

While using the free version of Heroku, I noticed that there were times when my dynos were subject to limit of free dyno hours or sleeping (https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/free-dyno-hours) ... which prevented check-in from happening (not sure if this is the case on yours). Ultimately, I decided to deploy my application on my own server instead where I had more control over the configuration and I could increase the granularity of the check-in process (that's this branch: https://github.com/echo0101/southwest-checkin/tree/passenger-nginx). If you're comfortable setting up your own server you can try an inexpensive VPS like https://clientarea.ramnode.com/aff.php?aff=1988 (starting at $15/yr) or just use your own box at home.

Hope this helps, I can try to help you debug but it might be worth seeking help from the owners of the origin branch too: https://github.com/aortbals/southwest-checkin

[mkitchingh]

Thanks. The Heroku logs don't seem to go back far enough. I only see today. The dyno was definitely up. I already had A list, so I wasn't too worried about it. I wanted to see if it worked. I'm very comfortable setting up my own server. I have a development VMware environment at work I can play with. I originally installed the aortbals/southwest-checkin version there, but I ran into too many issues. I couldn't find any errors, but their was no web server running at all after it started. I found the link to your in the comments, and it was so easy to get running. Heroku is very cool, but I'm finding it hard to troubleshoot. Do you have detailed install instructions for yours? Your components sound like an upgrade, and it is pieces I'm more familiar with.

[pw10n]

Yeah, Heroku is a great platform and super simple to get started but too expensive for me to deploy a project like this there.

By the way, the main reason I branched from the aortbals/southwest-checkin version was to deploy on a stack that I was already running on my server. So, Nginx and MySQL instead of Apache and Postgres. I also choose Passenger as the app server because it seemed the simplest and most efficient. I found this a better combo since my VPS was farily resource limited.

I put together some notes from my deploy in the passenger-nginx branch but not really a step-by-step guide.. honestly, because I had never deployed a rails app before so I was figuring things out as I go (so if you have any feedback, I'll gladly accept it too!) If you want, I can help you deploy and document the steps as we go. However, you might find more support if you're deploying the origin branch just because there'll be more people using it.

[mkitchingh]

Maybe it would more sense to be part of an existing installation of the app instead of spinning up yet another one. It seems the best way to test it is have more users. Any chance you would share the URL for yours with me privately and I could create an account on it? My email is (removed)
I would be happy to help. I have a single seat flight and group of 4 also flying in March. I would love to be able to test them somewhere. I would be happy to prove who I am in anyway if you have reservations (understandable) about sharing the URL. It is frustrating that my Heroku instance isn't working. I don't even really know how to troubleshoot. Nothing showed up at all in the logs at the time it should have triggered a check in.

[mkitchingh]

I'm all set now. I found this version that was a fork of yours. https://github.com/flyize/southwest-checkin
I'm not sure what all changed, but even with this version, the issue was a process/dyno/whatever it is called was not activated. The worker process was set to off. Once I enabled it, everything worked. I got all the emails for every reservation I had added. Thanks for helping me out!

[pw10n]

interesting. i'll have to see if i can figure out what the difference is. thanks for sharing!

[mkitchingh]

It could very well be that the worker process was disabled. I don't have yours online anymore to check.

[nickaknudson]

Note that the Heroku free dynos will go to sleep after 30 minutes. This will cause you to miss checkins.

I am migrating away from Heroku because it now costs $14 / month to run reliably.

[mkitchingh]

Just create a free account with Uptime Robot that checks your app every 28 minutes. Problem solved.