What is platformOS?
platformOS is a model-based application development platform. Aimed at frontend developers and site builders, it provides for a flexible and limitless API-first development approach while automating the whole DevOps infrastructure.
platformOS is a platform as a service (PaaS) that enables you to create and host anything from small websites to large enterprise applications and even entire SaaS products.
platformOS is:
- Decoupled: Use frontend code to build custom workflows, B2B, and P2P solutions that interact with any 3rd party API.
- Scalable: Build on load balanced Cloud infrastructure running world-wide with data centers across the globe.
- Cloud-agnostic: Hosted by the biggest players on the Cloud as a Service market: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud. More to come.
- Serverless: Where appropriate, we leverage serverless technologies to instantaneously scale parts of our system for spikes of load.
- Secure: Use our Secure Data Centers with added layers of security, and cater to country-specific security or legal requirements.
- Fast: Use Liquid templating and GraphQL data calls on a platform tuned for performance, regardless of your application's size.
- Flexible: Build progressive web apps, internet of things integrations, or APIs for mobile apps. You can integrate external services via webhooks, REST APIs to complement your build with already existing systems.
- Extensible: Integrate your sites with virtually any 3rd party system that provides API access, or build your own APIs in platformOS.
- SEO-friendly: Build with ElasticSearch to maximize the benefits of full text search using our custom model.
Technologies
Besides standard web technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript (including JSON and AJAX), platformOS uses a couple of languages that you need to be familiar with to build a site on our platform.
YAML
A human-friendly data serialization standard used in platformOS for setting properties in configuration files. To learn more, visit the Official YAML Documentation.
Liquid
Liquid or Liquid markup is an open-source template language used in platformOS to build dynamic pages, and to provide dynamic configuration (e.g. based on currently logged in user). Use Liquid to provide authorization policy for forms and pages, or to specify notifications (email, SMS, API call).
To learn more about Liquid and how to use it in platformOS, check out our Complete Guide to Liquid Markup in platformOS that includes an introduction for beginners, types, tags, filters, whitespace control, and detailed descriptions of platformOS-specific filters and tags — all of them demonstrated with examples.
GraphQL
A query language used to communicate with our data storages.
Check out platformOS code examples for GraphQL terms in our GraphQL glossary, and find detailed descriptions of queries, mutations, objects, scalars, interfaces, enums, and input objects in our GraphQL Documenation.
To help you quickly develop GraphQl queries, we provide a GraphiQL graphical user interface through the pos-cli. GraphiQL is a GraphQL editor with autocomplete and live docs that helps you structure GraphQL queries correctly.
To learn more about using GraphQL and the GraphiQL tool, explore our documentation topics on using GraphQL in platformOS.
Tip
We did some user research with developers who were new to platformOS but have now built their first couple of projects. These are their tips that will get you up to speed in platformOS quicker and easier:
- Focus on GraphQL before anything else, it is the key to platformOS. You will be able to craft complex queries in GraphQL and also send back only the data that you need. Later, discover fragment queries, a favorite feature of seasoned platformOS developers.
- Once you are familiar with the basics of platformOS (development workflow, pages, layouts, assets), invest some time in understanding Records. You can relate Records to GraphQL and build custom endpoints.
- Learn about our recommended Development Workflow.
- There are no limitations inherent in traditional CMS’s in platformOS. This is a creative platform designed to provide basic tools, not restrictions.