What value to set for Web3 provider when dapp is deployed to Heroku or other Hosting site

Question

I am trying to host my dapp on Heroku and smart contract on Rinkeby network. My dapp has a front end in node.js and jquery and an express backend server that I use to listen to solidity events and to 'get' and 'put' data from 'Mlab' mongodb offchain server. The app works perfectly fine on my Local Ganache and my server.js and below line of code to get the web3 instance.

const provider = new Web3.providers.HttpProvider("HTTP://127.0.0.1:8545");

My question is while deploying the server.js to Heroku should I keep this web3 provider setting same or does it need to be changed to some other value, please suggest.

Answer 1

You should first check if the user already has a web3 provider like MetaMask enabled. If so, use that. Otherwise, you can use something like infura to act as your Web3 provider if that makes sense. From MetaMask - Developers.md:

window.addEventListener('load', function() {

  // Checking if Web3 has been injected by the browser (Mist/MetaMask)
  if (typeof web3 !== 'undefined') {
    // Use Mist/MetaMask's provider
    web3 = new Web3(web3.currentProvider);
  } else {
    console.log('No web3? You should consider trying MetaMask!')
    // fallback - use your fallback strategy (local node / hosted node + in-dapp id mgmt / fail)
    web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider("https://rinkeby.infura.io/<your-token>"));
  }

  // Now you can start your app & access web3 freely:
  startApp()

})

Note that you may require the user to interact with your dApp, and in that situation, it may not make sense to enable Web3 through infura, which is best as a read tool. If that is the case, have the fallback logic show a message to the user to install MetaMask, and do not connect to a Web3 provider.