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App Platform Concepts

Validated on 1 March 2021 • Posted on 6 October 2020

This section details various concepts of App Platform to help build your mental model of how App Platform works, and what the documentation is referring to when it uses certain terminology.

App Spec

The app spec is a YAML manifest that declaratively states everything App Platform knows about your app.

Build & Run Command

The build and run commands are the command-line statements that compile your app component at build time and launch your app component after it has been built, respectively.

Buildpack

A buildpack is an open-source script that compiles apps as container images for a given programming language.

Component

A component in App Platform is any deployable, billable, run-time software element in your app. A component can be a database, a service, a worker, or a static site.

Console

The console is an in-browser command-line terminal. Its shell context is a running container instance for a given component.

Container

A container is a single running instance of a service, worker, or static site component shipped on App Platform.

Database

Existing databases are instances of a DigitalOcean managed database created outside of App Platform for production use.

doctl

doctl is the official command-line interface for the DigitalOcean API.

Environment Variable

Environment variables are in-memory key/value pairs that store important configuration details about an app.

Health Check

A health check is a scheduled HTTP or TCP request that you can configure to run on a repeating basis to ensure that a service is healthy.

HTTP Port

The HTTP Port is the port at which your service is listening for incoming HTTP requests.

HTTP Route

The HTTP route for a service is the publicly-accessible directory path that maps to the root of your service.

Insights Dashboard

The Insights Dashboard in App Platform helps you monitor the resource usage for your app.

Job

In App Platform, a job is a type of component that is not expected to run continuously and is suitable for running one-off operations.

Load Balancer

In App Platform, a load balancer is an unseen element of your app topology that handles routing and even distribution of incoming requests.

Logs

Logs are captures of the standard output stream that you can inspect for information about activity related to your app.

Region

A region is a physical location in the world where DigitalOcean has a datacenter that can run your App Platform app.

Scaling

Scaling is the process of adding more capacity to a component in your app, either horizontally (more containers) or vertically (more CPU and memory per container).

Service

In App Platform, a service is a type of component that is both accessible and running server-side code written in a supported programming language, such as Python, Ruby, Go, Node.js, or PHP.

Static Site

In App Platform, a static site is a type of component that only consists of a build process that produces static assets.

Worker

In App Platform, a worker is a type of component that is not internet accessible but runs server-side code written in a supported programming language, such as Python, Ruby, Go, Node.js, or PHP.