Question

App Platform deploy frontend downtime

Posted on January 6, 2023
Deployment DigitalOcean App Platform Engineering
Asked by waverunner

Hi. I have a question on how to handle deployment downtime.

So every time I deploy a new build for my React app, it takes a long time (which is fine). But when the deployment reaches the “Starting development server…” point, I can no longer access the app when I refresh the browser. During this time, my users cannot access the app until it is finished building.

What is the best way of handling this in App Platform? Traditionally I might use blue/green or some other proxy mechanism. Does App Platform have some way of preventing downtime during frontend builds?

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• January 6, 2023

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

From the output that you’ve shared, mainly this part here: Starting development server, it seems like you are running React as a Node service. What you could do is rather than running your react app in a development mode, you could change the component so it is deployed as a static site as described here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-deploy-a-react-application-to-digitalocean-app-platform

That way there should be no downtime during the deployment.

Let me know how it goes!

Best,

Bobby