New in App Platform

Last year, we introduced many new features in DigitalOcean App Platform, our fully managed PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering. Some of the most notable features were - the ability to forward App Platform logs to external systems for better analysis, getting more visibility into your apps via alerts and monitoring, and the ability to connect apps to Managed Databases as trusted sources. These features made it easier for a lot of startups and SMBs to build and scale their production apps using App Platform. It’s encouraging to see customers around the world take advantage of the fully managed platform to support their business growth. Adeva is one such customer that uses App Platform to stay focused on their app rather than spending time managing DevOps responsibilities. We’re thrilled to share that we’ve added several new features and capabilities to App Platform to make it even easier for you to build and manage your apps.

App Platform integration with Glitch

Glitch is one of the most popular platforms for developers to quickly build modern apps without the need to set up a local dev environment. You can code, auto-deploy, and collaborate with others in real time - all within your browser. We’re excited to announce that you can now easily deploy your apps developed in Glitch to DigitalOcean App Platform with the click of a few buttons. Check out this article and walkthrough video to see the integration in action. We’ve also built this list of sample apps that you can use to get started quickly. We’ll be discussing this integration in detail in our upcoming Tech Talk, so please join us to learn more.

Rollback to a previous deployment

Businesses, no matter how big or small, strive hard to provide new products and features to their customers as quickly as possible. So, it is quite common for companies to do software deployments daily or even multiple times a day. This means that there’s always a chance that things can go wrong. We are excited to announce that App Platform now supports rollbacks to previous deployments making it easier for you to deploy with confidence. This lets you recover from accidentally deploying code with errors or an app spec that causes failures. This feature is available in Basic and Professional tiers. For apps on the Basic tier, you can roll back to the most recent successful deployment. For apps on the Professional tier, you can roll back to the ten most recent successful deployments. Here’s a walkthrough video for rolling back an app to a previous deployment.

Trusted sources for Managed MongoDB

Last year, we introduced a capability to securely connect your apps built on App Platform to DigitalOcean Managed Databases as trusted sources. We are excited to extend this capability to Managed MongoDB. This means you can connect your apps to all our managed database engines (MongDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis) as trusted sources. Here’s a quick video that shows how you can add your app as a trusted source for a Managed Database.

Log Forwarding to Logtail

In our last App Platform update, we announced log forwarding to external systems for better analysis and troubleshooting. In addition to Papertrail and Datadog, App Platform now also supports forwarding application runtime logs to Logtail.

Improved security with the latest TLS protocols

Last year, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) formally deprecated the TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 cryptographic protocols on the grounds of security risks. The IETF recommends using the two latest versions of the TLS standards - TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3 that are deemed more secure. To help with this transition, we’ve added minimum_tls_version to the App Spec so that you can set it to 1.2 or 1.3 and test your apps. This testing is recommended but not required. After March 31, 2022, the minimum default TLS version for custom domains will be 1.2. If you want to use 1.3, you can do so by setting the minimum_tls_version in App Spec. Any new app created with minimum_tls_version explicitly set to 1.0 or 1.1 will fail to deploy after Mar 31, 2022.

We hope that you are excited about this release and will give App Platform a try. Check out the docs for more information. 

If you’d like to have a conversation about using DigitalOcean App Platform and Managed Databases in your business, please contact our sales team.

Happy coding!

Moises Eskinazi

Senior Product Manager