How to Create an App on App Platform

1. Go to https://cloud.digitalocean.com/apps and click Create App.

2. Select the source for your app. You can choose a GitHub repository, a GitLab repository, or a container image you uploaded to DigitalOcean Container Registry or Docker Hub.

3. Select the repository that contains your source code and specify the branch or tag in your repository that contains your app’s source code. If you’d like to automatically re-deploy your app when pushing to this branch/tag, select Autodeploy code changes and click Next.

   • For a monorepo, in the Source Directory field, specify the folder that contains the source and click Find Directory. See How to Deploy from a Monorepo for more information on how App Platform builds apps from monorepos.

   App Platform inspects the code and selects an appropriate runtime environment (such as Node, Ruby, etc). If you need to override this, upload a Dockerfile to your branch and restart the app creation process.

4. Configure your app.

   • Configure details such as HTTP routes, environment variables, the run command, or the HTTP port.
   • If you want to use environment variables, click Edit to supply them. Click the Encrypt checkbox to ensure a variable’s value is encrypted in the App Spec.
   • App Platform displays build and run commands that it detected, which you can now customize as needed. Refer to the cloud-native buildpacks for instructions for specific buildpacks. For Dockerfile-based builds, entering a run command overrides the Dockerfile’s entrypoint.
   • If your app needs a database, you can add a dev database or an existing managed database from your DigitalOcean account. The connection details for your database will be accessible via environment variables so that they can be conveniently accessed in your code.

5. Enter a name for your app and choose the region where you’d like your app to be hosted. Click Next.

   • The option to select a region is not available for static sites. Static components are served on DigitalOcean’s global CDN.

6. Select a plan and instance size you would like to use when a container is created from the image. Click Launch App.

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