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I have an existing MySQL database and would like to build a Rails app on top of it. How do I deploy my app to Heroku but still use my existing database instead of the default PostgreSQL database?

EDIT Rephrasing the question slightly (formerly, it was "Is it possible to deploy...").

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Yes. You can configure your application any way you like including specifying a non-Heroku database in your config file, and including using the default Heroku paradigm of using environment variables for config but with manually set database URLs in the environment variables.

You can either continue hosting your MySQL database separately, or migrate your data to a MySQL database hosted within the Heroku platform, like ClearDB (provided as a Heroku add-on).

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Great! How do configure the config file to let me use my MySQL database?
Is your MySQL database hosted in a way that a remote server you have not identified in advance will be able to connect to it and log in with a username and password? Unless your database is already hosted in the cloud separate from your application, the answer is probably "no" -- in this case it will likely be much easier to use Heroku's ClearBD and follow the documentation for that addon.
I believe my MySQL database lets remote servers log in with a username/password. (In order to access it, I have been logging in through phpMyAdmin.) How could I set up this connection programmatically in Rails?
Whether MySQL lets you log in remotely depends on how the hosting is configured. phpMyAdmin can be run on the same server MySQL is hosted on and connect through a local socket, so the fact that you are able to connect via that utility does not necessarily mean that remote log-in is enabled. Regardless, refer to the rails documentation for help on getting started there: guides.rubyonrails.org/…
Super helpful. I'm looking into potential remote access. Thanks Andrew!!
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Yes, although Heroku recommends that you use PostgreSQL, it is possible to migrate MySQL to Postgres with their service. They have an article in their docs for just such a scenario: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-mysql

They recommend you first install the http://rubygems.org/gems/mysql2psql gem

If your needs are MySQL specific and you have to use heroku clearDB has and addon https://addons.heroku.com/cleardb that you can use with your heroku app.

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