Deployment options

​

When you need in-app

• You’re on Ruby. Standalone deployment is currently available for Node.js only; the Ruby back-end runs as a Rails integration. To keep a heavy datasource out of your application’s process, move it to an RPC back-end. If you need standalone deployment with Ruby, please contact our sales team.
• Forest needs your running application, not just its code: an in-process service, a transaction to join, a shared in-memory cache. If you only need to call your business logic, expose an internal endpoint instead.

​

What doesn’t require in-app

• Reusing your ORM models. createSequelizeDataSource accepts any Sequelize instance, so your models only need to be importable — see monorepos. Four datasources read ORM models: Sequelize, Mongoose, ActiveRecord and Mongoid. Other stacks (TypeORM, Prisma, Drizzle, Knex) connect through datasource-sql or datasource-mongo. Those read the database directly, so there’s nothing to reuse.
• Boot cost. Introspection does the same work, and puts the same load on your database, in either option. Caching it is what removes it.
• Sharing a database. Two processes on one database just means a second connection pool. Size it with pool.

​

What sharing a process costs

• Restarts. Every deploy of either one restarts both.
• The event loop. At every boot, the agent builds a model for each table synchronously, on the loop that serves your requests. On a wide schema, your application’s requests queue behind that work on every deploy and restart.
• Crashes. An uncaught error while the agent starts exits the whole process.

​

If your code already lives in a monorepo

// packages/forest-agent/src/index.ts
import { createAgent } from '@forestadmin/agent';
import { createSequelizeDataSource } from '@forestadmin/datasource-sequelize';
import sequelize from '@acme/models'; // your application's models

createAgent({
  authSecret: process.env.FOREST_AUTH_SECRET,
  envSecret: process.env.FOREST_ENV_SECRET,
  isProduction: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production',
})
  .addDataSource(createSequelizeDataSource(sequelize))
  .mountOnStandaloneServer() // reads PORT, defaults to 3351
  .start();

​

Running two agents at once

createAgent({ ...options, prefix: '/forest-v2' })