🚀 Deploy to Railway

Chapter: Deployment & Final Projects · Level ★★★ · Time: 22 min

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NameClassDate

After this worksheet you can

Set up MongoDB AtlasDeploy Express to RailwayConfigure env varsFix CORS between frontend/backend

📚 Quick Recap

🎯 What you'll practice: Hosting a live Express server + MongoDB Atlas database on Railway.

🧮 Section B · Problem Solving ● INTERMEDIATE 2 + 3×3 = 11

5Railway auto-detects Node.js and runs npm install && npm .

6The Express middleware package used to allow cross-origin requests is .

7Write the cors() config allowing only your Vercel frontend's origin.

8List the 6 deployment steps in order.

9Why must MONGO_URI and JWT_SECRET be set as Railway environment variables instead of hardcoded?

🚀 Section C · Challenge ● CHALLENGE 5

10Your deployed backend logs "MongooseServerSelectionError" on Railway but works locally. Diagnose the most likely cause and the fix.

💭 Reflection — the most useful thing I learned:

A ___/4 B ___/11 C ___/5 Total ___/20 Teacher's Signature Parent's Signature

✂ answer key — fold or cut before handing out

1-B 2-B 3-B 4-B | 5 = start 6 = cors 7 = app.use(cors({origin:'https://your-app.vercel.app'})); 8 = create Atlas cluster, whitelist network access, push repo to GitHub, import on Railway, set env vars, connect frontend's API URL to the Railway URL 9 = Hardcoding secrets exposes them in source control (visible to anyone with repo access) and makes it impossible to use different values between local/staging/production without editing code | 10 = Most likely cause: Atlas's network access whitelist doesn't include Railway's IP range (only allows your local IP) — fix by setting network access to 0.0.0.0/0 (or Railway's specific egress IPs) in the Atlas dashboard.

📄 Need offline practice?Print this worksheet or open the one-page cheat sheet.

🗒 Cheat Sheet

🧠 Section A · Concept Check ● BEGINNER 4 × 1 = 4

🧮 Section B · Problem Solving ● INTERMEDIATE 2 + 3×3 = 11

🚀 Section C · Challenge ● CHALLENGE 5