As I go through setting up a Node.js app on Heroku, I encountered some really silly issues, so I figured I would share them with the web and hopefully help someone who runs into the same problem. This one was a really stupid mistake on my part – I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I did this. So going through the Getting Started with Node.js on Heroku guide, I got to the section on updating the package.json file to specify which version of node to use. And here’s where I made my mistake. My package.json looked like this:
{
"name": "example-app",
"version": "0.0.0",
"description": "",
"main": "app.js",
"scripts": {},
"author": "",
"license": "ISC",
"dependencies": {
"express": "^4.2.0"
}
"engines": {
"node": "0.10.28"
}
}
Can you see the mistake I made? No? I forgot a comma when I added the “engines” key to the json object. Well, I guess I should be clear that this was the first mistake I made. After I fixed this, I figured everything should be fine and my app would run, so I ran the git push command:
macbook$ git push heroku master
Drum roll please… “parse error: Expected separator between values…” – wanh wanh… oh yeah, I forgot to commit my changes to package.json before trying to push. And finally, success! My app was deployed. Again, I hope this helps someone. Good luck with your node app.