Hosting microservices is not something most "normal" website hosts are familiar with. Traditional websites usually consist of HTML files, CSS, and JavaScript, and probably a scripting language such as PHP, Python, or Ruby. Very few providers would allow you to run native apps on a server unless you rent the entire server. Needless to say, this is a challenge when you want to host a Vapor application, let alone a group of them.
In this chapter, you will explore what it takes to host Swift and, specifically, Vapor applications. We will go through what is needed in general and then apply this knowledge so that you can actually host your API. We will set up Docker and learn how to configure environment variables. Step by step, you will learn how to host a Swift application on servers so that you know how to apply this to other applications. By the end...