How to Update an App's Spec

Validated on 19 Oct 2023 • Last edited on 23 May 2024

App Platform is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering that allows developers to publish code directly to DigitalOcean servers without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

App Platform automatically generates a YAML file, called a “spec”, for each app deployed to App Platform. The spec defines the app’s configuration, such the app’s domain setup, regions, and environment variables.

You can edit the spec to change the app’s configuration, for example, you can edit the spec’s region field to change the datacenter region where the app is deployed. You can review the spec file reference documentation for a full list of available fields and applicable values.

Update an App’s Spec using Automation

You can update an app’s spec using the CLI’s app update command or the API’s app update endpoint. To update a spec, include the updated spec as a JSON object in the request body of the API call, or use the CLI’s --spec flag to specify the path to the updated spec file.

How to update an app spec using the DigitalOcean CLI

To update an app spec via the command-line, follow these steps:

  1. Install doctl, the DigitalOcean command-line tool.

  2. Create a personal access token, and save it for use with doctl.

  3. Use the token to grant doctl access to your DigitalOcean account.

                  doctl auth init

  4. Finally, update an app spec with doctl apps update. The basic usage looks like this, but you'll want to read the usage docs for more details:

                  doctl apps update <app id> [flags]

    The following example updates an app with the ID f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6 using an app spec located in a directory called /src/your-app.yaml. Additionally, the command returns the updated app’s ID, ingress information, and creation date

                       doctl apps update f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6 --spec src/your-app.yaml --format ID,DefaultIngress,Created
How to update an app spec using the DigitalOcean API

To update an app spec using the DigitalOcean API, follow these steps:

  1. Create a personal access token, and save it for use with the API.

  2. Send a PUT request to https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/apps/{id}

    cURL

    To update an app spec with cURL, call:

    
                curl -X PUT \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN" \
  "https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/apps/{id}"

    Python

    
                import os
from pydo import Client

client = Client(token=os.environ.get("DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN"))
req = {
"spec": {
    "name": "web-app-01",
    "region": "nyc",
    "domains": [
        {
            "domain": "app.example.com",
            "type": "DEFAULT",
            "wildcard": True,
            "zone": "example.com",
            "minimum_tls_version": "1.3",
        }
    ],
    "services": [],
    "static_sites": [
        {
            "cors": {
                "allow_origins": [
                    {"exact": "https://www.example.com"},
                    {"regex": "^.*example.com"},
                ],
                "allow_methods": [
                    "GET",
                    "OPTIONS",
                    "POST",
                    "PUT",
                    "PATCH",
                    "DELETE",
                ],
                "allow_headers": ["Content-Type", "X-Custom-Header"],
                "expose_headers": ["Content-Encoding", "X-Custom-Header"],
                "max_age": "5h30m",
                "allow_credentials": False,
            },
            "routes": [{"path": "/api", "preserve_path_prefix": True}],
        }
    ],
    "jobs": [
        {
            "name": "api",
            "gitlab": {
                "branch": "main",
                "deploy_on_push": True,
                "repo": "digitalocean/sample-golang",
            },
            "image": {
                "registry": "registry.hub.docker.com",
                "registry_type": "DOCR",
                "repository": "origin/master",
                "tag": "latest",
            },
            "dockerfile_path": "path/to/Dockerfile",
            "build_command": "npm run build",
            "run_command": "bin/api",
            "source_dir": "path/to/dir",
            "envs": [
                {
                    "key": "BASE_URL",
                    "scope": "BUILD_TIME",
                    "type": "GENERAL",
                    "value": "http://example.com",
                }
            ],
            "environment_slug": "node-js",
            "log_destinations": {
                "name": "my_log_destination",
                "papertrail": {
                    "endpoint": "https://mypapertrailendpoint.com"
                },
                "datadog": {
                    "endpoint": "https://mydatadogendpoint.com",
                    "api_key": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789",
                },
                "logtail": {
                    "token": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
                },
            },
            "instance_count": 2,
            "instance_size_slug": "apps-s-1vcpu-0.5gb",
            "kind": "PRE_DEPLOY",
        }
    ],
    "workers": [
        {
            "name": "api",
            "gitlab": {
                "branch": "main",
                "deploy_on_push": True,
                "repo": "digitalocean/sample-golang",
            },
            "image": {
                "registry": "registry.hub.docker.com",
                "registry_type": "DOCR",
                "repository": "origin/master",
                "tag": "latest",
            },
            "dockerfile_path": "path/to/Dockerfile",
            "build_command": "npm run build",
            "run_command": "bin/api",
            "source_dir": "path/to/dir",
            "envs": [
                {
                    "key": "BASE_URL",
                    "scope": "BUILD_TIME",
                    "type": "GENERAL",
                    "value": "http://example.com",
                }
            ],
            "environment_slug": "node-js",
            "log_destinations": {
                "name": "my_log_destination",
                "papertrail": {
                    "endpoint": "https://mypapertrailendpoint.com"
                },
                "datadog": {
                    "endpoint": "https://mydatadogendpoint.com",
                    "api_key": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789",
                },
                "logtail": {
                    "token": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
                },
            },
            "instance_count": 2,
            "instance_size_slug": "apps-s-1vcpu-0.5gb",
        }
    ],
    "functions": [
        {
            "cors": {
                "allow_origins": [
                    {"exact": "https://www.example.com"},
                    {"regex": "^.*example.com"},
                ],
                "allow_methods": [
                    "GET",
                    "OPTIONS",
                    "POST",
                    "PUT",
                    "PATCH",
                    "DELETE",
                ],
                "allow_headers": ["Content-Type", "X-Custom-Header"],
                "expose_headers": ["Content-Encoding", "X-Custom-Header"],
                "max_age": "5h30m",
                "allow_credentials": False,
            },
            "routes": [{"path": "/api", "preserve_path_prefix": True}],
            "name": "api",
            "source_dir": "path/to/dir",
            "alerts": [
                {
                    "rule": "CPU_UTILIZATION",
                    "disabled": False,
                    "operator": "GREATER_THAN",
                    "value": 2.32,
                    "window": "FIVE_MINUTES",
                }
            ],
            "envs": [
                {
                    "key": "BASE_URL",
                    "scope": "BUILD_TIME",
                    "type": "GENERAL",
                    "value": "http://example.com",
                }
            ],
            "gitlab": {
                "branch": "main",
                "deploy_on_push": True,
                "repo": "digitalocean/sample-golang",
            },
            "log_destinations": {
                "name": "my_log_destination",
                "papertrail": {
                    "endpoint": "https://mypapertrailendpoint.com"
                },
                "datadog": {
                    "endpoint": "https://mydatadogendpoint.com",
                    "api_key": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789",
                },
                "logtail": {
                    "token": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
                },
            },
        }
    ],
    "databases": [
        {
            "cluster_name": "cluster_name",
            "db_name": "my_db",
            "db_user": "superuser",
            "engine": "PG",
            "name": "prod-db",
            "production": True,
            "version": "12",
        }
    ],
}
}
update_resp = client.apps.update(id="bb245ba", body=req)

Update an App’s Spec from the Control Panel

To edit your app’s spec from the control panel, navigate to your app’s Overview page and then click the Settings tab. From the Settings tab, scroll to the App Spec section and click Edit. This opens the spec editor.

You can manually edit the spec in one of two ways:

  1. Edit the spec in your browser: Click inside the spec editor and make your changes as you would in a text editor. Once finished, click Save.
  2. Download and edit the spec: From the spec editor, click Download to download the spec to your local computer. Open the file in your preferred text editor and make your changes. Once finished, save the file and click Upload to upload the updated spec.

Once you have updated the spec and have saved or uploaded the changes, the app automatically redeploys with the new changes.

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