Key Concepts

Before you host a web client application in Catalyst, make sure to upload the client resources in the right format.

Sources File Format

You must ensure that you upload the client resources of your web application in the right format to host it in Catalyst without any errors.

To host a web client application in Catalyst, you need to upload the source files of the web application in the standard project directory structure. This is explained in detail in the Project Directory Structure help page.

Here’s a quick look at the standard project directory structure in Catalyst:

  • The project directory fundamentally contains two folders: functions and client. You must upload the client directory alone in Web Client Hosting. The client directory should contain all the front-end client files of the application, such as the JavaScript, HTML, and CSS files.
Note: The catalyst.json configuration file is not required when you host your web application from the Catalyst console in _Web Client Hosting_. It is only required to be present when you deploy your application files from the CLI or from a GitHub repository.
  • The client directory must contain two files: an index.html file which is the homepage of your web app, and a client-package.json file that contains the configuration information of the client resources. All other front-end styling, scripting, or HTML files are optional, based on the requirements of your web app.
Note: When you initialize the web client using the CLI, the CLI automatically creates the client-package.json in its boilerplate structure. However, if you did not use the CLI to initialize your web client, and you deploy the client using the console directly, you must ensure that you create the client-package.json file in the client directory manually and include the necessary code in it in the standard structure. You can refer to the help on client-package.json file structure.
  • You must provide the name of your web app in the client-package.json file. This will be the final name of your application. Once you set a name for it and host the application, you must not change it.

  • In case you rename the index.html file or you wish to use a different file as the home age of your web application, you must make the necessary changes in the client-package.json file.

Once you have followed all the guidelines mentioned above, you can host your web application from the Catalyst console. Any discrepancies from the standard directory structure could result in an error in hosting the application.

Default Web Application URL

You can obtain the default URL of your application from Web Client Hosting or from the Environments settings section in your console, after it is hosted.

The default application URL is generated for the Development environment when you host your application. After you deploy your application to Production, a Production URL is generated.

The Development and Production URLs slightly differ in their formats. Both URLs contain the same:

  • Project Domain Name: The unique domain name that is generated for your project when you host it in Web Client Hosting. Example: shipmenttracking-57673975.
  • Application Domain: The domain for all the Catalyst applications you host, which is ‘catalystserverless.com’.

However, the Development application URL also contains the environment type, and its value is development. For example, ‘https://shipmenttracking-57673975.development.catalystserverless.com’.

The environment type is not specified in the Production URL. That is, the production URL will be ‘https://shipmenttracking-57673975.development.catalystserverless.com’.

As mentioned in the Introduction, you can also map your domain with Catalyst and use that URL instead.

Application Versioning

Application versioning can be handled easily in Catalyst. The client-package.json configuration file contains the version information of your web client.

The following guidelines must be followed while providing the version information in the client-package.json file:

  1. You must specify the version number of the application in the decimal format in the field version. The version is specified as ‘1.0.0’ by default, when the JSON file is created.
  2. With every subsequent update of your web app, you must modify the version number in the JSON file incrementally to indicate the next higher version.
  3. You must not decrement the version number once the web app has been hosted. This will cause errors.
  4. You must not retain the same version number, if you have modified the web app and you are deploying the changes to the Production environment. You must update the web app’s version incrementally.
  5. If you delete a version of your web app that is lower than the currently live version, you will not be able to replace that version, as you cannot deploy a decremental version. However, if you delete a version of your web app that is higher than the currently live version, you can deploy another instance of your web app with the same version number as the deleted version.

The version information of your web app is displayed in the App Version History section in Web Client Hosting.

Last Updated 2024-06-11 17:58:39 +0530 +0530