Docs

Deploying a WebforJ app

WebforJ apps can be uploaded as either a .war (run in Tomcat) or an executable Spring Boot .jar (webforJ's Spring Boot integration) — Shippers detects which one you've uploaded from the file itself, so nothing needs to be configured up front. The JDK version is also auto-selected to match whatever your project was compiled against.

Deploying a Spring app

A Spring app is always uploaded as an executable Spring Boot .jar — the same fat-jar produced by spring-boot-maven-plugin's repackage goal or Gradle's bootJar task. Shippers runs it directly with java -jar, choosing the JDK image that matches your compiled bytecode.

Connecting to a database

A database is provisioned independently of any one app, from the database step of "Create a deployment" or the Databases section of your dashboard. It's internal-only — reachable from your own Shippers apps over the private network, never from the public internet — so there's no external client access (no DBeaver, no migrations run from your laptop). Its detail page shows five separate connection fields — Host, Port, Database, Username, and a reveal-to-view Password — rather than one connection string, and you wire those into your app through environment variables, not by baking them into your build.

HikariConfig config = new HikariConfig();
config.setJdbcUrl(
    "jdbc:postgresql://" + System.getenv("DB_HOST") + ":" +
    System.getenv("DB_PORT") + "/" + System.getenv("DB_NAME"));
config.setUsername(System.getenv("DB_USER"));
config.setPassword(System.getenv("DB_PASSWORD"));

DataSource dataSource = new HikariDataSource(config);

The CLI is a Pro-only feature — a trialing account can still deploy from the dashboard, but can't create or use a CLI token. Create one from your profile's "CLI access" panel after upgrading.

npm install -g @shippers/cli

Integrating the CLI into CI/CD

shippers deploy works the same in CI as it does on your laptop — the only difference is authenticating without a terminal to type into.

shippers login "$SHIPPERS_TOKEN"

name: Deploy to Shippers
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20

      - name: Install the shippers CLI
        run: npm install -g @shippers/cli

      - name: Authenticate
        run: shippers login "$SHIPPERS_TOKEN"
        env:
          SHIPPERS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.SHIPPERS_TOKEN }}

      - name: Deploy
        run: shippers deploy

# Works the same on GitLab CI, CircleCI, Buildkite, etc. — the CLI
# only needs Node 20+ and a network path to api.shippers.cloud.
npm install -g @shippers/cli
shippers login "$SHIPPERS_TOKEN"
shippers deploy