Strapi not writing to persistent disk on render.com

Questions and Answers
1
System Information
  • Strapi Version: 4.7.0
  • Operating System: Windows 11 (dev), Linux (server)
  • Database: sqlite
  • Node Version: 18.15.0
  • NPM Version: 9.5.0
  • Yarn Version: 1.22.19

I am trying to deploy my strapi project to render.com. I have followed the guide here:
Deploy Strapi | Render · Cloud Hosting for Developers
Render Deployment

However there seems to be an issue with the file path in which the sqlite database file is created.

the render.yaml file states:

    disk:
      name: strapi-data
      mountPath: /data
      sizeGB: 1
	  ## ...
	  envVars:
      - key: DATABASE_FILENAME
        value: /data/strapi.db

This creates the persistent disk with the ABSOLUTE mount path of /data (in the ROOT directory of the SERVER)

However, the DATABASE_FILENAME value in this example seems to creating the strapi.db file RELATIVE to the PROJECT DIRECTORY (which is a few levels deeper: /opt/render/project/src/backend/data)

This means that the database file does not persist between deployments.

Here is my database.js file:

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  connection: {
    client: "sqlite",
    connection: {
      filename: path.join(
        __dirname,
        "..",
        env("DATABASE_FILENAME", ".tmp/data.db")
      ),
    },
    useNullAsDefault: true,
  },
});

Is this an issue with Strapi, Render.com or the code/configuration? Any help here is greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
Chris

2

I found what was wrong. The issue was with how I was building the file path for the database file. I was able to fix it with this snippet:

const path = require("path");

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  connection: {
    client: "sqlite",
    connection: {
      filename: env(
        "DATABASE_FILENAME",
        path.join(__dirname, "..", ".tmp/data.db")
      ),
    },
    useNullAsDefault: true,
  },
});

Notice how path.join is used in the fallback option only

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