Application development

GOV.UK PaaS gives you a straightforward way to run your cloud native applications in containers. The platform supports most common programming languages and Docker containers.

Languages

GOV.UK PaaS provides a consistent experience for different programming languages through the use of language buildpacks.

BuildpackDescription
Binarya binary web application
Customa custom buildpack providing a language runtime from the wider Cloud Foundry community
Goapps written in the Go programming language
Javaapps written in the Java programming language or Java Virtual Machine languages such as Scala
Nginxa web server
Nodejsapps written in the Nodejs programming language
PHPapps written in the PHP programming language
Rubyapps written in the Ruby programming language
Pythonapps written in the Python programming language
Rapps written in the R programming language
Statica static HTML/CSS/Javascript website served by nginx. The product of site publishing tools such as Jekyll, Middleman or Hugo

Docker

GOV.UK PaaS also supports the deployment of Docker images with the following caveats:

  • We do not offer a Docker registry service
  • Images must be pushed to a Docker registry such as DockerHub or Google Container Registry before they can be deployed to GOV.UK PaaS. Your ability to stage and restage Docker applications is tied to the availability of the registry hosting the images.
  • GOV.UK PaaS does not support Docker Compose multi-container applications
  • The maximum size of Docker image that may be staged is 4GB

Backing services

GOV.UK PaaS provides a number of highly available backing services. Visit our marketplace to view more information about these services.

ServiceDescription
Amazon Simple Queue ServiceAmazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) provides queues through a web service interface
AutoscalerApps can be configured to dynamically increase or decrease the number of running instances using autoscaling
CDN-routeProxy traffic from a user controlled domain to an existing Cloud Foundry application or external URL. This allows you to bring your own domain to the platform and have the platform manage your TLS certificates using AWS Cloudfront + AWS Certificate Manager
InfluxDBA time series database
MySQLA relational database system
Object StoreObject storage using AWS S3
OpenSearchOpenSearch is a search and analytics engine that allows you to store and search data
PostgreSQLA relational database system
RedisA distributed, in-memory key-value database

External services

In addition to the service we provide, applications can connect to other internet hosted back-ends allowing you to integrate third party services and other platforms through public web APIs.

Public and private networking

Applications on GOV.UK PaaS typically have a route to allow inbound connections via the internet.

The platform also supports private applications (applications without a public internet route).