Functions Glossary
Functions are blocks of code that run on demand without the need to manage any infrastructure. Develop on your local machine, test your code from the command line (using doctl), then deploy to a production namespace or App Platform — no servers required.
This glossary defines the core concepts behind functions to help build your mental model of how functions work and understand what the documentation is referring to when it uses certain terminology.
The application specification, or app spec, is a YAML manifest that declaratively states everything about your App Platform app, including each resource and all of your app’s environment variables and configuration variables.
An environment variable is a in-memory key/value pair that developers use to store configuration details about their app.
Function as a Service (FaaS) is a type of cloud service that allows you to develop, run, and manage reusable functions without needing to build and maintain a backend infrastructure.
A function is a reusable block of code that you can deploy to the DigitalOcean Functions service and then access via a URL. For example, you can write a traditional Node.js function that returns a list of products from a database and then deploy that function to the Functions service.
Logs are captures of the standard output stream that you can inspect for information about activity related to your app.
A namespace is a collection of resources containing one or more functions hosted on the DigitalOcean Functions service.
A package is a collection of functions. Packages let you organize functions within a project.
A runtime environment is an execution environment for deploying and running applications. Runtime environments contain the necessary applications, dependencies, and operating system to run an application. For example, when you create an app on App Platform, App Platform inspects the code and app resources, and then selects the appropriate runtime environment, such as Node, to run the app in.