Publish your prototype online
Publishing your prototype online means you can:
- share it with others, such as colleagues
- test it with users
You'll need a hosting service to publish prototypes online.
Hosting services
The NHS.UK prototype kit runs on any hosting service that supports Node.js.
Your organisation may already use a hosting service for the prototype kit. Check with your digital team about which platform to use.
For example:
- Heroku (requires payment) – see GitHub integration on Heroku website
- Railway – see Deploy repository on Railway website
In Railway, you need to set the command to get started. Go to Settings > Deploy and set it to npm run start
.
Some hosting services may automatically deploy your prototype every time you merge new changes in the connected GitHub repository. You may be able to enable automatic deploys. If it hasn't automatically update your prototype, you will need to do this manually.
Setting a password
When running the prototype kit online, you must set a password. This is to stop anyone accidentally finding your prototype and mistaking it for a real service.
To set a password, check your hosting services documentation on how to set "environment variables". (It may have a slightly different name like "config vars" or "variables".)
The password should be set using the variable PROTOTYPE_PASSWORD
.
If you are using an older version of the prototype kit (before v4.12.0) you will also need to set a username using the variable PROTOTYPE_USERNAME
.
In Railway, you also need to create:
- a variable called
NODE-ENV
and set the value toproduction
- a variable called
USE_AUTH
with the value oftrue
Read more about: