#Concepts

How the platform actually works, beyond the getting-started walkthrough: the deploy model, what you configure on your app, and what you manage around it.

#Environments and branching

Every git branch you push becomes its own environment, with its own live URL. Pushing a new branch doesn't redeploy your existing environment: it creates a separate one alongside it. A new environment inherits its configuration and data from the branch (environment) it was created from. Deleting the branch removes the environment with it.

This is what makes it practical to deploy a feature branch or a PR for review without touching what's already live. See Upsun's documentation on environments for the full lifecycle (activating, deactivating, merging).

#Your app's configuration

Everything in this section is declared in the .upsun/config.yaml you generated with init in Getting started. This is what that file actually describes.

#Languages and runtimes

Any language or runtime supported by the Platform works here, not only PHP or Node. The Symfony and Node examples referenced elsewhere in these docs (and in the demo apps catalog) are demo material to help you get started, not an indication of what's supported.

#Backing services

Your .upsun/config.yaml file can declare backing services alongside your application, commonly Postgres, Redis, or a message queue.

#Scheduled jobs and background workers

.upsun/config.yaml treats workers (long-running processes, e.g. a queue consumer) and crons (scheduled jobs) as first-class deploy concepts alongside your main application. Declare them there rather than bolting on your own scheduler or process manager.

#Persistent storage

You can declare mounts for anything that needs to persist across deploys, such as a local image cache. Anything not declared as a mount is wiped and rebuilt on every deploy, so don't rely on the local filesystem for anything you need to keep.

#Resource sizing

New environments start with minimal default resources. Size CPU, memory, and disk per application with:

akeneo-extension-platform resources:set --size <app-name>:<size>
    

See Upsun's documentation on managing resources for sizing guidance and autoscaling.

#Project administration

Things you manage around your app, separately from .upsun/config.yaml.

#Environment variables and secrets

Extensions: Credentials and Custom Apps cover what credentials your app typically needs (a PIM API client ID/secret, for example) and how the PIM side is configured. This is about the other end: getting those values onto your deployed app.

Set them as variables on the project rather than committing them to your repository. A variable lives at one of two levels:

When the same variable exists at both levels, the environment-level value wins.

akeneo-extension-platform variable:create --level environment --environment main --name env:PIM_CLIENT_SECRET --value <value> --sensitive true
    

A few things to keep in mind:

• Prefix with env: to expose the variable to your app as a regular environment variable (PIM_CLIENT_SECRET above). Without the prefix, it's only available through the PLATFORM_VARIABLES JSON object.
• --sensitive true makes the value write-only: your app can read it at runtime, but nobody can read it back from the Platform Console or the CLI.
• Inheritance only flows downward. An environment-level variable set on main is inherited by environments branched from it afterwards, unless you set it with --inheritable false. A variable set on a child environment never propagates back to its parent or to sibling environments. If a value must be available everywhere, set it at the project level instead.

See Upsun's documentation on variables for the full reference.

#Team access

The admin account Akeneo provisions for you isn't the only way to access the project. That admin can invite teammates directly, without going through Akeneo for each one:

akeneo-extension-platform user:add teammate@example.com -r admin
    

Access can be scoped per project or per environment (admin, contributor, viewer). See Upsun's documentation on administering users for the full set of roles.

#Custom domains

You're not limited to the default *.platformsh.site URL: you can attach your own domain:

akeneo-extension-platform domain:add your-domain.com
    

See Upsun's documentation on domains for DNS and certificate setup.