Environments
Please be sure of your agent type and version and pick the right documentation accordingly.
This is the documentation of the forest-express-sequelize and forest-express-mongoose Node.js agents that will soon reach end-of-support.
forest-express-sequelize v9 and forest-express-mongoose v9 are replaced by @forestadmin/agent v1.
Please check your agent type and version and read on or switch to the right documentation.
Environments
After you install for the first time, a local development environment is created for you, with a temporary pre-deploy-to-production branch (more on branches later).
Your first objective should be to deploy to production.
Deploying to Production
Forest Admin is meant to help you manage your operations: this can only happen if you work with your Production data! To do so, you need to create your Production environment.
Click "Deploy to production" on the top banner or in the Environments tab of your Project settings.
Deploy your admin backend
On the first step, you need to input your admin backend's URL. This is the URL of the server onto which you have deployed (or will soon deploy) your admin backend's code base:
Note that for security reasons, your admin backend must use the HTTPS protocol.
Connect to your database
On the next step, you need to fill out your Production database credentials:
Set your environment variables
The final step requires that you add environment variables to your server. Follow on-screen instructions:
Once your node server is successfully detected and running with the indicated environment variables, a "Finish" button will appear. Click on it to finalize the creation of your Production environment.
Creating a remote environment
Now that your admin panel is live in production, you might want to add an extra step for testing purposes. Forest Admin allows you to create remote (a.k.a staging) environments.
To create a new remote environment, go to your Project settings (1):
Then from the Environments tab, click on "Add a new environment" (2).
Choose your environment name
You'll first be asked to input the name of the remote environment you wish to create:
Enter your admin backend's URL for that environment
Deploy your admin backend to your new server - your staging server for instance - then input its URL:
Connect to your database
You need a separate database for this new environment: if you're creating a Staging, then it must be your staging data, so your staging database!
Set your environment variables
The final step requires that you add environment variables to your server. Follow on-screen instructions:
Once your node server is successfully detected and running with the indicated environment variables, a Finish button will appear. Click on it to finalize the creation of your new remote environment.
Change environment origin
You can change the origins of your environments to create complex workflows - for instance dev > staging > preprod > production. All the layout of an environment will be generated based on its parent's layout.
To do so, click on the environment you wish to change the origin of and from its details page, select the desired origin in the Set Origin section.
All child environment will be refreshed based on the new architectures.
Set an environment as production
A standard project usually has a production and at least a staging environment, but you may be using other remote environments. At some point you may feel the need to set another environment as your production environment (a.k.a reference).
To do so, click on the environment you wish to set as production and from its details page, click "Set as production".
The actual reference will take the new production as origin. All children layout will be refreshed. Any layout change that is not applicable will be ignored.
Delete an environment
You may also delete an environment. Be very careful as there is no going back!
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