Fly.io with Rails

In this tutorial, learn how to integrate Dotenv Vault with Fly.io and a Rails application.

You can find a complete example repo here.

Deploy to Fly.io

Deploy your Rails app to fly.io.

flyctl launch

Here’s an example of a simple welcome index page that runs on Fly.io.

// welcome/index.html.erb
<h1>Welcome <%= ENV["HELLO"] %></h1>

example

That will deploy your Rails app to Fly’s infrastructure.

Install dotenv-vault

Create your local .env file.

HELLO="Rails on fly"

Add dotenv-vault-rails gem to Gemfile

// Add 'dotenv-vault-rails' to Gemfile
gem 'dotenv-vault-rails'

example

Run bundle install.

$ bundle install

Require dotenv-vault.

Require it as early as possible in your Rails application. For a Rails application require dotenv-vault/load in application.rb

// config/application.rb
require 'dotenv-vault/load'

Test that it is working locally and go to welcome page.

$ rails s

It says Hello Rails on fly at http://localhost:3000.

Build .env.vault

First set a production value for when we deploy. I set it to HELLO=Production. Run dotenv-vault open to edit production values.

$ npx dotenv-vault open production

Then build your localized encrypted .env.vault file.

$ npx dotenv-vault build

Great! Commit your .env.vault file to code. It is safe to do so. It is a localized encrypted vault of your environment variables.

Set DOTENV_KEY

Lastly, set the DOTENV_KEY on Fly.io.

Run npx dotenv-vault keys production to get your production decryption key.

$ npx dotenv-vault keys production
remote:   Listing .env.vault decryption keys... done

dotenv://:[email protected]/vault/.env.vault?environment=production

Set it on Fly.io

$ flyctl secrets set RAILS_ENV=production DOTENV_KEY='dotenv://:[email protected]/vault/.env.vault?environment=production'

WARNING: The single apostrophe is important. Otherwise, Fly.io will truncate the DOTENV_KEY incorrectly and decryption will not work.

That’s it!

Commit your changes to code and run:

$ flyctl deploy

When the deploy runs, it will recognize the DOTENV_KEY, decrypt the .env.vault file, and load the production environment variables to Fly.io. If a DOTENV_KEY is not set (like during development on your local machine) it will fall back to regular dotenv.