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Railway (Backend)

The backend runs on Railway in their Singapore region on the Hobby plan ($5/month).

Service config

  • Project ID: kept private (see SECRETS file)
  • Service name: backend
  • Source: GitHub einsze/tinadiet repo, builds from projects/backend/
  • Region: Asia-Southeast (Singapore)
  • Plan: Hobby ($5/month) — sufficient for MVP traffic
  • Build: nixpacks (auto-detects Node + npm)
  • Start command: default from package.json start script (node dist/index.js)
  • Port: 3000 (Railway injects $PORT)
  • Private internal name: backend.railway.internal
  • Public URL: auto-generated *.up.railway.app (fallback, kept private)
  • Custom domain: api.tinadiet.com (Cloudflare proxied)

Volume

  • Name: backend-volume
  • Mount path: /data (not /app/data — see gotcha below)
  • Size: 1 GB
  • Backups: NOT configured (Bucket A todo — should set up Railway volume snapshots before LIVE launch)

Critical gotcha: the volume mounts at /data ROOT. Production DATABASE_URL is file:/data/app.db. better-sqlite3 silently creates ghost empty files when the path is wrong — if you see “no rows” but expect data, double-check the path is /data/app.db not ./data/app.db or /app/data/app.db.

See feedback memory feedback_railway_sqlite_volume_path.

Build optimization

nixpacks.toml in backend/ skips the better-sqlite3 source rebuild:

[phases.install]
cmds = [
  "npm ci"      # NOT npm ci --build-from-source
]

Saves ~1 minute per deploy. Prebuilt binary works fine on Node 22 LTS.

Env vars

Set via Railway dashboard → service backend → Variables tab. Some are required for boot; others are graceful-when-empty.

Required (or boot fails):

  • LINE_CHANNEL_ID
  • LINE_CHANNEL_SECRET
  • LINE_CHANNEL_ACCESS_TOKEN
  • LINE_LOGIN_CHANNEL_ID
  • SESSION_JWT_SECRET

Graceful (empty = feature disabled):

  • OPENAI_API_KEY — AI features 503 when empty
  • OMISE_* — payment 503 when OMISE_SECRET_KEY empty
  • STRIPE_* — currently empty intentionally
  • OMISE_WEBHOOK_SECRET — webhook accept-all when empty (DEV ONLY)
  • JOBS_TRIGGER_SECRET — /internal/jobs/* returns 401 when empty

Has defaults (override if needed):

  • OPENAI_MODEL=gpt-4o-mini
  • OPENAI_VISION_MODEL=gpt-4o
  • DAILY_SUMMARY_CRON=0 21 * * *
  • WEEKLY_SUMMARY_CRON=0 8 * * 1
  • EXPIRE_PREMIUM_CRON=0 2 * * *
  • CRON_TZ=Asia/Bangkok
  • PAYMENT_AMOUNT_THB=150
  • PAYMENT_GRANT_DAYS=30

See Reference — Env Vars for the full list.

Auto-redeploy on env change

Railway redeploys the service when any env var is added, changed, or removed. This means:

  • Change a non-critical env var = ~3 min downtime (cold restart) — schedule during low traffic
  • Push of new code WITH env change = Railway might do 2 deploys in succession (one for env, one for code) — be aware

Console access (for DB queries)

Railway provides a web Console:

  • Dashboard → backend service → Console tab
  • Bash shell inside the running container
  • Has access to /data/app.db
  • No sqlite3 CLI — use node -e inline with better-sqlite3

Example session:

Terminal window
node -e 'const db = require("better-sqlite3")("/data/app.db"); console.log(db.prepare("SELECT COUNT(*) AS n FROM users").get());'
# { n: 2 }

See Ops — DB Queries for a full runbook of snippets.

Monitoring

  • Logs: Railway dashboard → service → Deployments → latest deploy → View Logs (real-time + searchable history)
  • Metrics: CPU, memory, network, disk usage in Metrics tab
  • Healthcheck: Railway pings /healthz periodically (built into the service)

TLS

Let’s Encrypt auto-managed by Railway via Cloudflare’s proxied DNS. No manual cert renewal needed.

Deploy history

Latest deploys live in Railway dashboard → service → Deployments tab.
Each deploy is keyed to a git SHA (sourced from RAILWAY_GIT_COMMIT_SHA env).

The deployed commit is reflected in /healthz commit field — useful for verifying which version is running:

Terminal window
curl https://api.tinadiet.com/healthz | jq -r '.commit'
# 197f3dd

Common operations

View latest deploy logs

Dashboard → backend → Deployments → click latest → View Logs

Tail real-time logs

Dashboard → backend → Logs tab (live tail)

Restart service

Dashboard → backend → Settings → Restart

Rollback to previous deploy

Dashboard → backend → Deployments → click a previous green → Redeploy

SSH into container

Not supported on Hobby plan. Use the Console (web shell) instead.

Trigger a deploy without code change

Push an empty commit:

Terminal window
git commit --allow-empty -m "chore: trigger redeploy"
git push

Or in Railway dashboard, Redeploy on the latest commit.