```yaml
---
slug: nodejs-memory-leak-heroku
published: 2022-07-19
description: You can connect to your production Heroku instance, debug it live, and even trace down memory leaks.
keywords: heroku, r14, r15, memory leak
changelog: ~
---
```

There's nothing more frustrating that your node.js app leaking memory. If you're coming here because of Heroku R14 / R15 errors, take some deep breaths, it'll be okay. Heroku's smart enough to swap to disk when this happens, and will kill and restart your app if things get absolutely wild.

## Background

![Heroku Dashboard with a lovely orange band of R14 errors](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/163650457-2371246f-bc80-4482-b42e-8bfdbf664a1a.png)

It started with my email box getting pelted with warnings that the memory quota on a project I advise for was getting hit with R14 errors. Going to the Heroku metrics page confirmed that yes, something was clearly wrong. In the above picture, you can see again and again the memory usage surge and then Heroku responding with an R15 and force rebooting the server. Moments later, the memory usage was growing again.

It's a Memory Leak, Ruin of Productivity and afternoons. 😭 

However, since the last time I dealt with a memory leak (2011) the tools have come a long way. So here's how you triage a production memory issue, run analysis against your currently leaking production boxes, and stamp out the issue.

## Modern Tools

The tools for dealing with a memory leak have gotten much better, especially if you're on Heroku. You only need two:

* A current version of Chrome (which comes with the amazing v8 debugger)
* The Heroku CLI (if on Heroku)

The first does 90% of the heavy lifting, while the second now has all the commands we need to turn on a debugger in production and forward debug data to our local machine. Make sure you've logged in to the Heroku CLI if you're triaging Heroku.

## Opening Chrome's Inspector

The Chrome Developer Tools are always available on `chrome://inspect`, which can be put in your browser's address bar. The DevTools are useful for debugging everything from node.js processes to Service workers. For now, we want to stay on the `Devices` tab, make sure `Discover network targets` is checked, and leave that window open while we set other things up. You may even see a few device targets show up that Chrome's discovered. In my case, apparently my TV can be seen. Odd, but neat.

![The Chrome developer tools](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/163651415-d75abf95-e781-45fb-ab2c-3e9adcb6ba1d.png)

## Enabling the Debugger With a Signal

The most common way to start debugging node is to add the `--inspect` CLI arg, either directly (via `node --inspect <your file>`), or in the appropriate env values ( `NODE_OPTIONS="--inspect" node <your file>`). In production environments, it may not be desirable to enable the debugger on every start; in the case of Heroku which randomly assigns ports, you can't even guarantee the debug port of `9229` is available. But, you can enable the debugger a different way.

From the [node.js debugging page](https://nodejs.org/en/docs/guides/debugging-getting-started/)

> Node.js will also start listening for debugging messages if it receives a SIGUSR1 signal. (SIGUSR1 is not available on Windows.) In Node.js 7 and earlier, this activates the legacy Debugger API. In Node.js 8 and later, it will activate the Inspector API.

Sending a signal is as easy as using the unix `kill` command, where `<PID>` is your node.js process ID:

```sh
$ kill -usr1 <PID>
```

You can try this locally by running `ps aux | grep node` to find your node.js process, and then using the `PID` for the above `kill` command. Personally, I find that the `usr1` signal is not only more reliable (works everywhere) but also means you don't have to completely restart the server. When you send `usr1`, node just sees the signal and starts up its debugger. It'll pop up moments later in the Chrome DevTools.

![local development showing the inspector starting](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/163651616-5d423ec2-bdd9-4bcd-828c-29e4bbf5335e.png)

![the development tools showing the new remote target](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/163651579-b7181e72-86d9-47e9-9d46-eb4c3cf76bc4.png)

Hit the `inspect` link and you'll be taken to a very familiar DevTools interface, but optimized for node.js debugging. In addition to the Console and Sources, you'll also have "Profiler" for CPU profiling, and "Memory" for memory usage profiling,

![connected development tools, ready to go](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/163651715-22c7a39a-81cb-43da-bc97-4e17523ffb56.png)

## Connecting to Heroku in Production

Once that's all working, it's time to connect to our production instance in Heroku and take some live samples. Close the inspector and local development server if needed, and make sure your `heroku` command works. If you're using a different environment such as Digital Ocean, look up SSH instructions to get to your host. They'll be different on every provider.

For heroku, there's the `ps:exec` command which gives you a shell on your default process for dyno 1. Be sure to specify your `<APP_NAME>` so that you're ssh-ing into the correct box, and if you need to connect to a dyno process that's not `web`, add the `-d <dyno>` flag.

```sh
$ heroku ps:exec -a <APP_NAME>
```

![connecting to a remote box over SSH](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/163652037-8309d4c9-452a-4bf5-848a-98f466346471.png)

From here, we can search our node process with `ps aux | grep node` and start the debugger with `kill -usr1 <PID>`. Our debugger will start, but obviously we can't see it yet. Heroku (and other providers) don't expose port `9229` to the internet for security reasons. Open another terminal window and use heroku's forwarding command to create a local tunnel for your debugger (and add the optional `-d` flag if needed).

```sh
$ heroku ps:forward -a <APP_NAME>
```

And just like that, your production instance shows up in the Chrome DevTools.

## Sampling

Taking samples is straightforward. Wait for the VM instance size to grow, click the trash can icon (force GC) to ensure it's actually grown by a reasonable amount, and then hit the **Take Snapshot** button to capture a memory heap. Chrome DevTools will be busy for a bit, but it'll create a Heap, which it adds to the left-hand side of the Memory profiler. Every heap is a detailed analysis of what was in JavaScript at that exact moment. Every string, object, key, event, closure, callback; you name it, it's here.

Collect several samples (5-6 is ideal) since you'll be looking for identifiable trends. I also recommend waiting about 2-3 MB between each sample. We want our growth in memory to be noticeable, and whatever's leaking to stick out.

Here, I've got 6 production samples of a leaking app. In the time I sampled, we added about 15MB to the footprint. 😱 

![chrome devtools with several heaps loaded](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/163652520-5df538be-aa9a-4ae7-bf41-17617abe030f.png)

What matters is we can see the memory growing, we have several samples of the Heaps in question (which contain our growing memory), and those Heaps are readable by the Chrome DevTools. We can save the Heaps, disconnect from our production machine (which also closes the debugger), and get to our analysis.

## Using Heap Compare

Select the newest (largest) Heap, and above the list of objects in the heap, change from `Summary` to `Comparison`. This changes the Heap view from telling you what's in the Heap to what changed **between** Heaps.

![how to change from summary to comparison view](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/163652680-cd5f2530-6b12-4c00-8014-326df53c8a80.png)

Sort the table by `# Delta`, and the problem suddenly becomes very obvious.

![a sorted by delta comparison](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/163652782-5832abe0-c4c3-4e79-b804-100f1916fa47.png)

We can compare against a few other Heaps (that's why we captured them) to isolate the source of the memory leak. Here, I'm comparing Heap 5 to Heap 4, where the number of `(concatenated string)` is much smaller and easier to manage. There's a lot of weird date strings like "-137 days, 21" being created and retained. Clicking on one gives us the full Retainer log. It's part of a larger string, that's part of a larger string, that's in `discountTimeLeft` in the update cycle of a React component called `DiscountBanner`, inside of a... `Timeout`.

![The memory leak source](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/163653410-35a401c4-0b85-4eb6-9c14-4eec51878a0d.png)

Opening up the `DiscountBanner` culprit, there's a `setInterval` in the `constructor`. Fixing this and redeploying closed the memory leak. It turned out that when next.js was running in Heroku, the `setInterval` would just keep on running and building its string about how many days were left on the discount. Since that string was locked in the `setInterval` callback, it could never be garbage collected by v8. Add in a few thousand requests per second, and those discount strings would ultimately take up all of the available memory and cause Heroku to restart the server with an R15 error.

## More than Heaps

I only needed the Heap compare, but the CPU profiler and the Memory timeline (Allocation instrumentation on timeline) can help narrow the issue even further in a larger application. The hardest part is getting a reproducible issue. Looking at production not only makes it easier, but ensures you're solving the right problem. And when you're done, you'll never put a `setInterval` in a React component constructor again. 😆 

Solving a Node.js Memory Leak on Heroku

```yaml
---
slug: use-github-as-a-cms
published: 2022-01-11T11:40:00-08:00
description: GitHub's rich GraphQL API gives you a built-in headless CMS
changelog: ~
---
```

First thing's first. I really love [Ghost](https://ghost.org/). It's got an excellent content and admin API and I'd honestly consider it better than many other Headless CMS options. Second, this isn't a post about Ghost. There were two major shortcomings in Ghost that ultimately I couldn't find good workarounds for.

1. Custom structured data. As it stands I was jamming everything into `codeinjection_foot` as YAML and hoping I didn't ever need that field. I also needed to comment my code explaining all my additional metadata resided in the field not called `metadata`. Yikes.
2. Something that isn't Mobiledoc. I understand why it's used. I don't like that my parsing process on Codedrift requires that I start from the final HTML and then throw it all in [rehype](https://github.com/jakobo/codedrift/blob/9d0bd286355f5b80d1ba71561d78603a9a388ed0/src/components/markup/rehype.js#L25) to [fix URL links, remove widowed text, and more](https://github.com/jakobo/codedrift/blob/0f5991456f576dd031f2e95888af5878a63f16c3/src/graphql/util.js).

HTML to AST back to HTML is not a good feeling and the pipeline was brittle. When I realized I didn’t want to re-add tags on my posts to Codedrift because of the complexity, I looked for alternatives.

I saw [Casual JavaScript](https://github.com/casualjavascript/blog) which was running the entire site off of [GitHub Issues](https://github.com/casualjavascript/blog/blob/gh-pages/index.html). It wasn't perfect, but GitHub Issues are in Markdown, and Markdown _does_ support frontmatter, and frontmatter _is literally designed for metadata_.

The missing piece was something that wasn't issue based. [Discussions](https://github.blog/changelog/2021-02-23-github-discussions-graphql-api-public-beta/). Sold.

## Core Tools
The original Codedrift had a GraphQL micro server that ran everything. It was overengineered (like all good personal projects should be), but in the rewrite I wanted to remove as much of my code as possible. The entire GraphQL infrastructure became a simple [http proxy](https://github.com/jakobo/codedrift/blob/9d5b0349dc204cd1076b54fd5e475dffe449c84d/src/pages/api/proxy/api.github.com/graphql.ts) using [http-proxy-middleware](https://www.npmjs.com/package/http-proxy-middleware). This way I wouldn't need to expose a personal access token in the browser.

The next step was to use [graphql-code-generator](https://www.graphql-code-generator.com/) for Typescript typed Urql hooks. I'm still a fan of Urql, and their [docs for next.js integration](https://formidable.com/open-source/urql/docs/advanced/server-side-rendering/#nextjs) are easy to follow and set up.

Because scope creep is a thing, the site's now also in Typescript. 🥳 

So now I've got typed GraphQL queries to GitHub's API without exposing the access token. All that's left is to get our Discussions, turn them into blog posts, and solve for weird cases like [tag-based searches](https://github.com/jakobo/codedrift/blob/main/src/pages/thunked/tag/%5Bname%5D.tsx#L19) which need to go through the `search` endpoint instead of the `repository` endpoint. Consistency (and sanity) between queries came from the Post fragment.

## The Post Fragment
Fragments are [better explained by graphql.org](https://graphql.org/learn/queries/#fragments), but in context they are the reusable unit of documents. In this case, a fragment on `Discussions` will let me get the same fields every time for our discussion, regardless if I arrived at the Discussion via the `search` endpoint or a `repository` endpoint. Even though it might overfetch a little for its use case, a fragment pushed through graphql-code-generator will give you a typed object representing the returned data structure.

In other words, having this GraphQL fragment
```gql
fragment PostDetails on Discussion {
  id
  title
  lastEditedAt
  url
  labels(first: 100) {
    nodes {
      id
      name
      description
    }
  }
  author {
    avatarUrl(size: 10)
    ... on User {
      id
      name
    }
  }
  body
}
```

Will give us this type in our generated file:
```ts
export type PostDetailsFragment = {
  __typename?: "Discussion";
  id: string;
  title: string;
  lastEditedAt?: any | null | undefined;
  url: any;
  body: string;
  labels?:
    | {
        __typename?: "LabelConnection";
        nodes?:
          | Array<
              | {
                  __typename?: "Label";
                  id: string;
                  name: string;
                  description?: string | null | undefined;
                }
              | null
              | undefined
            >
          | null
          | undefined;
      }
    | null
    | undefined;
  author?:
    | { __typename?: "Bot"; avatarUrl: any }
    | { __typename?: "EnterpriseUserAccount"; avatarUrl: any }
    | { __typename?: "Mannequin"; avatarUrl: any }
    | { __typename?: "Organization"; avatarUrl: any }
    | {
        __typename?: "User";
        id: string;
        name?: string | null | undefined;
        avatarUrl: any;
      }
    | null
    | undefined;
};
```

Even a `Partial<PostDetailsFragment>` adds excellent safeguards to a function when I expect to receive data shaped like the GraphQL response for a Discussion.

## Slugs and Search
Fetching the most recent posts is [a straightforward process](https://github.com/jakobo/codedrift/blob/cbcc0f4beac26e611c14cb789a7adc5b3ba7c55a/src/graphql/posts.graphql#L27) since the API can go from a repository to its discussions and limit those to a single category. For accessing a single post by anything other than its ID, there's only the `search` endpoint.

A generic search on GitHub takes a search query as a string. It's the same string used in [GitHub's Advanced Search](https://github.com/search/advanced?r=jakobo%2Fcodedrift) which at least means it's easy to test and iterate on, even if there is no official query builder. The result is a very generic GraphQL query for searching, which can be used for both slugs and tags. It could probably also be used for the recently created posts, but I'd prefer less magic strings where possible.

```gql
query SelectPostsWithSearch($search: String!, $first: Int = 1, $after: String) {
  search(first: $first, after: $after, type: DISCUSSION, query: $search) {
    nodes {
      ... on Discussion {
        ...PostDetails
      }
    }
    discussionCount
    pageInfo {
      endCursor
      hasNextPage
      hasPreviousPage
      startCursor
    }
  }
}
```

The first of two major downside to this approach is I need to constantly cast the node collection to `Discussion`, but I feel that's more my inexperience with Typescript than the language itself. The other is that because when running a search, there's always a risk of returning two records for a search. I briefly thought about changing the URLs to be `slug/post_id` but that felt like it was binding me too closely to GitHub's ID system.

## The New Post Workflow
Posts on Codedrift start in [my public notes](https://codedrift.com/notes), but eventually they’re well-formed enough to get ideas and opinions. At that point, there’s discussion on the draft, which used to exist exclusively over email and Twitter DMs. These processes also worked, but it always felt like I was missing an opportunity for more open discourse about a topic.

So now, when a post grows out of Codedrift, it’ll become an [issue](https://github.com/jakobo/codedrift/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22%E2%9C%92+Draft%22), When it’s ready to be published, it can be moved to a Discussion, and GitHub saves all of the relevant comments and edits in the transfer. This has the added benefit of matching my mental model. Unposted content is an issue which certainly needs resolution. Posted content deserves a discussion.

The code for all of this is in the [Codedrift repository](https://github.com/jakobo/codedrift), though now that I'm just calling a GitHub API with no interference, the code feels very vanilla. And that feels pretty good.

GitHub as a CMS

```yaml
---
slug: developing-react-native-with-expo-and-flipper
published: 2021-12-07T01:00:00.000Z
description: Goodbye Chrome Debugger, hello Flipper
repost:
  url: https://blog.expo.dev/developing-react-native-with-expo-and-flipper-8c426bdf995a
  text: This article was written for the Expo Blog and appeared with the title _Developing React Native with Expo and Flipper_. It's been reproduced here with permission.
changelog:
  2021-12-03: There’s now an Expo community plugin for setting up Flipper in your Expo projects. The section on Flipper integration was updated to reflect this change.
---
```

There’s a lot of great React Native modules out there, but most of them require a custom iOS or Android build, leaving “ejecting” as the only option for Expo users. That changed in SDK >42, when Expo added the ability for Expo Application Services to create custom development builds of your app.

What’s a custom development build? It’s not just any Expo Go app, it’s your Expo Go app; complete with any React Native module you ever wanted, all without ever having to hit the eject button.

And now that Expo 43 includes React Native 0.63, [Flipper by Facebook](https://fbflipper.com/) is available by default; there’s no better time to ditch the old “Chrome Developer Tools” way of debugging your React Native app. Not only will you gain access to device information and crash logs, you’ll also have Flipper’s amazing plugin library. Everything from Apollo to Redux debuggers are in there.

If you’d like to skip to the end result, check out the [jakobo/expo-cdc-example](https://github.com/jakobo/expo-cdc-example) repo as that’s what we’ll be building towards.

## Overview
- Configuring your code for EAS
- Creating a development build of your app
- Connecting to your app via Flipper
- Final considerations

## Create an EAS-Friendly Expo App
We’re going to start our journey by making a run-of-the-mill Expo application (install Expo CLI if needed with `npm install -g expo-cli`). When we run `expo init -t expo-cdc-example`, we’ll be given a standard Expo application, configured for Typescript. If you would prefer vanilla JavaScript, just omit the `-t` option. The result (minus our hidden folders and our lockfile) looks like this:

```
/
|- assets
|- app.json
|- App.tsx
|- babel.config.js
|- package.json
|- tsconfig.json
```

From here, we can run `expo start` and view our Expo app. We could also build locally, but what we’re really looking for is to let someone else do all the work for us. This is doubly true if we’re developing on Windows, as XCode isn’t even an option for making an iOS app. Enter Expo Application Services (EAS).

EAS lets you use Expo’s hardware to build your iOS/Android application, and has its own CLI. You can use EAS for building non-expo applications as well, so the EAS cli isn’t bundled with Expo. We’ll need to install it globally like we did with our `expo-cli`.

    npm install -g eas-cli

Let that run, and you’ll have a new `eas` command available. The EAS CLI doesn’t have an `init` command, and while running the `eas` build command will generate the configuration file for us, we’ll have greater control if we create the file ourselves. Create a file named `eas.json` in your application root and copy/paste the following configuration in:

```json
{
  "cli": {
    "version": ">= 0.34.0"
  },
  "build": {
    "base": {
      "env": {}
    },
    "development": {
      "extends": "base",
      "developmentClient": true,
      "distribution": "internal",
      "releaseChannel": "default",
      "android": {
        "buildType": "apk"
      }
    },
    "production": {
      "extends": "base",
      "distribution": "store",
      "releaseChannel": "stable",
      "android": {
        "buildType": "app-bundle"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

This sets up EAS to build something we’ll call a “preview” build. It will behave just like our production app, but it’s claimed ownership of the default release channel. By utilizing `releaseChannel: "default"` in our development build, and not our production builds, we can make sure that an accidental `expo publish` doesn’t push code to our live application. There’s [a lot more to `eas.json`](https://docs.expo.dev/build/eas-json/) than we’re covering in this article, but the above is enough for us to launch our builds. If you’re already using the default channel for your app store releases, you can change value of the `releaseChannel` property.

We can now tell EAS to build our app. We’ll want to specify our build profile preview as part of the command.

If this is your first time running EAS, you’ll want to associate any iOS devices with your ad hoc provisioning profile. You can [follow the steps in the Expo documentation](https://docs.expo.dev/build/internal-distribution/), or just run `eas device:create` and follow the prompts. To generate our build, we just need to run `eas build --profile=preview`.

EAS will be off building things, and you can go get a cup of coffee. ☕

After a while, you’ll have a shiny build that you can install on your iOS/Android device! EAS runs in the background too, so no need to wait for a build to finish, you can get back to coding.

## Configuring EAS For a Development Build

So far, we’ve created an Expo app, we’ve configured EAS, and we’ve kicked off a custom build. But EAS doesn’t just let you make custom production builds, it **lets you make development builds too!** That’s right, it is your own Expo Go, with your own modules. And we’ll be using EAS to build it.

Enabling a development builds means creating a new profile in our `eas.json`. These additions should go alongside your preview build.

```json5
{
  "build": {
    // ...
    "devclient": {
      "extends": "base",
      "releaseChannel": "default",
      "distribution": "internal",
      "developmentClient": true,
      "android": {
        "buildType": "apk"
      },
      "ios": {
        "simulator": true
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Our new profile, `devclient` adds a few EAS options. The `developmentClient` flag tells EAS that we want a custom build of the Expo development app, and the `ios.simulator` field tells EAS not to create an iOS app, but a bundle that’s designed for the iOS Simulator.

Now, kick off your new build and go get more coffee. ☕

    eas build --profile=devclient

When that finishes up, you’ll have a custom simulator build. When you install that on your simulator and launch it, it will look different than your usual Expo Go app.

![The Expo Custom Development Client launch screen](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1795/146845551-1bd86cb8-8236-4805-ba10-2bf24ab0cb82.png)
_The Expo Custom Development Client launch screen_

Instead of the usual expo start command, it tells us our app needs to be started with the `--dev-client` flag, so let’s do that. Stop your expo start if it’s running, and restart it with `expo start --dev-client`.

The project will show up in your development build with a URL structure of `exp+<project>://expo-development-client/…`. The `exp+<project>` protocol helps the native OS tell the difference between your custom Expo app and any others you might have on the simulator or device.

So long, Expo Go, hello Development Builds. 💅

## Hello Native Modules, Hello Flipper

All of the above setup needs to be done exactly once, and the payoff is huge. We’re going to get a better debugger for React Native, called [Flipper](https://fbflipper.com/), by Facebook. Go download the app, and we’ll set up our development build to use this native module.

First, we’ll need to install Flipper and its dependencies, which is a straightforward pair of command: `expo install react-native-flipper react-devtools-core` for our expo related code and `yarn install expo-community-flipper` for our build plugin we'll be using later.
Then, we’ll need to tell our App to connect to Flipper in our `App.tsx` file:

```tsx
// App.tsx
import { connectToDevTools } from "react-devtools-core";
if (__DEV__) {
  connectToDevTools({
    host: "localhost",
    port: 8097,
  });
}
```

Since we’ve added a new native module, we’ll need to create a new development build that has our native iOS and Android code bundled in. Because Flipper also requires changes to our app’s `Podfile`, we’re also going to make use of Expo’s [Config Plugin](https://docs.expo.dev/guides/config-plugins/) system. Because we already installed the [community Flipper plugin](https://www.npmjs.com/package/expo-community-flipper), it's as easy as adding the plugin to our `app.json`.

```json5
{
  "expo": {
    // ...
    "plugins": ["expo-community-flipper"]
}
```

One last time (and one last ☕): `eas build --profile=devclient`

Install the new build on your simulator, open up the Flipper App and it just works 🤯

You can repeat this for any Native Module you want, though Flipper is an excellent starting point since it lets you use `react-native-reanimated` v2 with TurboModule support, frees you from the built-in Chrome debugging tools, gives you crash logs, and more. Just remember that you’ll need to create a new development build when you add a new module, or make judicious use of try/catch blocks to ensure you don’t throw an error.

## Keep Building From Here

This is just the start of what you can do with Expo’s development builds and Native Module support. Most Native Modules will work out of the box in a development build thanks to React Native’s autolinking, but if you do need custom changes to your `Info.plist` or `Manifest.xml` files (or even editing a `Podfile` like we did today), Expo can take care of that too as part of the build process. These [config plugins](https://docs.expo.dev/guides/config-plugins/) let you modify the plist and manifest without ejecting your app and are configured from within your `app.json`.

If you still run into issues, there’s an #EAS channel on the [Expo discord](https://discord.gg/4gtbPAdpaE) and the [Expo Forums](https://forums.expo.dev/) have an entire section dedicated to EAS.

Hey 👋🏼, I’m Jakob

Solving a Node.js Memory Leak on Heroku

GitHub as a CMS

Developing React Native with Expo and Flipper