Railway Deployment

Deploy and manage applications on Railway's platform.

Quick Start

# Install Railway CLI
npm i -g @railway/cli

# Login
railway login

# Initialize project
railway init

# Deploy
railway up

railway.toml Configuration

[build]
builder = "nixpacks"
buildCommand = "npm run build"

[deploy]
startCommand = "npm start"
healthcheckPath = "/health"
healthcheckTimeout = 300
restartPolicyType = "on_failure"
restartPolicyMaxRetries = 3

[service]
internalPort = 3000

Nixpacks Configuration

# nixpacks.toml
[phases.setup]
nixPkgs = ["nodejs-18_x", "python311"]

[phases.install]
cmds = ["npm ci"]

[phases.build]
cmds = ["npm run build"]

[start]
cmd = "npm start"

Environment Variables

# Set variable
railway variables set DATABASE_URL="postgres://..."

# Set from file
railway variables set < .env

# Link to service
railway service
railway variables set API_KEY="secret"

Database Services

PostgreSQL

# Add PostgreSQL
railway add -d postgres

# Get connection string
railway variables get DATABASE_URL

Redis

railway add -d redis
# Access via REDIS_URL

MySQL

railway add -d mysql
# Access via MYSQL_URL

Private Networking

# Services can communicate via internal DNS
# Format: ${{service-name}}.railway.internal

# Example: API calling database service
DATABASE_HOST: ${{postgres.railway.internal}}
DATABASE_PORT: 5432

Volumes (Persistent Storage)

# Create volume
railway volume create my-data

# Mount in service
railway volume attach my-data:/app/data

In code:

// Data persists across deploys
const dataPath = '/app/data';
fs.writeFileSync(`${dataPath}/file.json`, JSON.stringify(data));

Cron Jobs

# railway.toml
[deploy]
startCommand = "node cron.js"
cronSchedule = "0 */6 * * *"  # Every 6 hours

Multi-Service Setup

my-project/
├── api/
│   ├── railway.toml
│   └── ...
├── worker/
│   ├── railway.toml
│   └── ...
└── frontend/
    ├── railway.toml
    └── ...

Deploy each:

cd api && railway up
cd ../worker && railway up
cd ../frontend && railway up

Dockerfile Deploy

FROM node:18-alpine

WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --only=production
COPY . .

EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["npm", "start"]

# railway.toml
[build]
builder = "dockerfile"
dockerfilePath = "./Dockerfile"

Health Checks

// Express health endpoint
app.get('/health', (req, res) => {
  res.status(200).json({ 
    status: 'healthy',
    timestamp: new Date().toISOString()
  });
});

# railway.toml
[deploy]
healthcheckPath = "/health"
healthcheckTimeout = 100

Resources

Railway Docs: https://docs.railway.app
Railway CLI: https://docs.railway.app/develop/cli