Question

Need App Platform deployment advice.

Posted on November 13, 2024
DigitalOcean App Platform
Asked by gevikb

Hi,

I would like to deploy my NodeJs app using the App Platform. What is the recommended way of deploying when the app has the following:

Uses custom/private NPM repo and its packages that are not public
Requires libs like Puppeteer for printing PDFs and such
Has a custom prepare script that needs to prepare stuff before the build

Do I need to prepare and create a container image or is there anyother way.

Thanks.

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• November 14, 2024

Hey there!

In addition to what Mark mentioned already here, I could add a couple of things!

To access a private NPM repo, you can set up an environment variable called NPM_TOKEN in the App Platform, which stores your private repository’s authentication token. This token allows your build process to authenticate and fetch packages from your private repo as usual.

If you need more detailed instructions, take a look at this discussion here, where a community user got this working with a private NPM repos on App Platform:

Private NPM Repository Credentials on DO App Platform

Alternatively, if you’re using Yarn, you can configure .yarnrc.yaml with your npmAuthToken to manage your authentication settings securely.

For additional dependencies like those required by Puppeteer, App Platform supports an Aptfile to install packages during the build. Just create an Aptfile in your project’s root directory and list each package you need. Here’s an example for Puppeteer:

Aptfile:

chromium
libnss3
freetype
harfbuzz
ttf-freefont

App Platform will automatically detect the Aptfile and install the packages during the build process. For more info, check out the Aptfile reference documentation.

There is a chance that some obscure packages might not be available in the default repositories though.

For custom steps that need to be run before the app is built, you could add a prepare script in your package.json, or configure it through other environment variables if needed.

And finally as Mark mentioned, it might be best to use a Dockerfile as you will have more control.

If these native options don’t fully meet your needs, you can always deploy using a custom Docker image. This gives you complete control over the environment but does require some setup. Just push your Docker image to DigitalOcean’s Container Registry and specify it in your App Platform service: