Jess Lee

for The DEV Team

Posted on Dec 10, 2020

Announcing the DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV!

#dohackathon #digitalocean #meta

We are thrilled to announce the DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV! 🎉

From now through January 10th, you’ll have the opportunity to win some seriously sweet prizes for building an application using DigitalOcean’s new App Platform. In the process, you’ll get to know the DigitalOcean App Platform and walk away with a shiny new app to your name ✨

What is the App Platform from DigitalOcean?

DigitalOcean’s App Platform helps you build your applications quickly and with fewer distractions. With it, you can push code to production in just a few clicks while DigitalOcean handles the infrastructure, app runtimes, and dependencies.

Learn more about App Platform here, read the docs here, and find some tutorials here. Here's a video on how to build, deploy, and scale your first app on App Platform.

A few examples of applications built on the DigitalOcean App Platform:

Blog w/ Strapi and Next.js: Demo - GitHub Repo

Guest Book App w/ Laravel and React: Demo - GitHub Repo

RSS Reader with Django and React: Demo - GitHub Repo

Laravel Blog: Demo - GitHub Repo

More Sample Apps

We cannot wait to see how you approach this fun challenge — and the amazing applications you come up with!

Why Participate?

The DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV is a fantastic (and free) opportunity to get better acquainted with a new Platform-as-a-Service tool so you can focus on what you do best — develop software! The four categories (listed above) will help you demonstrate your creativity and software acumen while learning and having some fun.

If that’s not incentive enough, we also have some prizes you won’t want to miss.

Prizes

4 Grand Prize Winners (one in each category):

$2,000 USD gift card or equivalent
$300 USD credit to the DEV Shop
DigitalOcean Swag Pack
DEV Sticker Pack
DEV “App Platform Hackathon” grand prize profile badge
A Zoom meet-and-greet with DigitalOcean’s CEO, Yancey Spruill

Runner-Up Prizes (10 Total):

$200 USD gift card or equivalent
$150 USD credit to the DEV Shop
DigitalOcean Swag Pack
DEV Sticker Pack
DEV “App Platform Hackathon” runner-up profile badge

Participants (with a valid project):

DEV Sticker Pack
DEV “App Platform Hackathon” participant profile badge

How to submit your app and enter the DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV

Select a category for your project (listed above)
Create a new DigitalOcean account (or use your existing account! Note: a credit card will be required at sign-up, but you will not be charged. Please refer to these FAQs for more info.
Create an app using DigitalOcean’s App Platform that falls under one of the listed categories
Fill out this form to get a $50 credit for DigitalOcean, good for 60 days from the date of redemption.
Use one of the following permissive licenses for your code: MIT, Apache, BSD-2, BSD-3, or Commons Clause.
Use this post template to officially submit your application for the hackathon
Be sure to publish your submission on DEV between December 10 and January 10 (11:59 PM PT/8 AM January 11, UTC), and provide your app’s URL, screenshot, description, and source code

Bonus points for…

Documenting your app’s progress across multiple posts with the final post serving as your official submission (hint: use series: [“series name”] in the markdown heading of all your App Platform Hackathon posts to link all content in a series)
Using the Deploy to DO button in your app (info here )

** ”Bonus points” means we will give submissions with these criteria priority when selecting winners.

Additional Rules

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to 18+. Contest entry period ends January 10, 2021, 11:59 pm PST/ 8 AM UTC on January 11, 2021. Contest is void where prohibited or restricted by law or regulation. All entries must be new projects and created during the hackathon period. For Official Rules, see Contest Announcement Page and General Contest Official Rules.

Community Support

To ask any questions about DigitalOcean's App Platform throughout the hackathon, leave a comment in the App Platform Hackathon help thread

If you run into any additional questions about DigitalOcean’s App Platform, you can also reach their team by asking a question here

We also have a community discussion thread where you can share your ideas and get suggestions on improvements from the DEV community as you build your app. We encourage you to share your progress along the way to generate more excitement and benefit from additional community feedback suggestions.

Important Dates 🗓

December 10, 2020: Hackathon Begins
January 10, 2021: Hackathon Submission Due at 11:59 PM PST
January 15, 2021: Hackathon Winners Announced

We can’t wait to see what you build. Happy coding!

Top comments (191)

Chris Sev • Dec 10 '20

Hey everyone! My name is Chris and I'm the founder of scotch.io and a Developer Advocate at DigitalOcean.

Excited about this hackathon and the things we'll all build! Let me know if you have any questions here or catch me on Twitter.

kuberdenis • Dec 10 '20

Hey Chris, huge fan of scotch.io, the JS introduction particularly! I've got a question for you - is a game project considered "truly silly" for the random roulette? Is it worth giving a shot, or should I go for something else in your opinion?

kuberdenis • Dec 10 '20

I mean - I have an idea for a game, which is not silly (I can, of course, try to make it such with funny drawings and so on) and I am thinking if it's worth going for that or
should I choose something else?

Chris Sev • Dec 10 '20

A game is a great idea! 100% go for it! Random roulette is very much for stuff like this that doesn't fit cleanly into the other categories.

kuberdenis • Dec 10 '20

Thank man! And good luck to all participants, HACK ON!

Manitej ⚡ • Dec 10 '20 • Edited

I'm trying to use digital ocean from many months but I live in india. Students don't have a credit card nor a PayPal account. Missing this hackathon too :(

cubiclesocial • Dec 11 '20

PayPal became available in India as of 2017, so I'm not sure why you can't use it with a bank account + PAN. DigitalOcean requires a prepayment of $5 USD to start the DO account via PayPal even with the $50 in credit for this hackathon.

Mridu Bhatnagar • Dec 11 '20

$5 goes through payment or is it deducted from $50 credit that they are giving?

Bobby • Dec 11 '20

Hey,

The $5 will be used to top up your account, this mainly applies to PayPal. Here are the two messages for each payment method again:

Credit card:
“We won’t charge your card. You may see a temporary pre-authorization charge to verify the card, which will be reversed within a week.”

Paypal:
“To confirm your PayPal account, you need to make a $5 pre-payment. This pre-payment will apply to any future bills.”

Mridu Bhatnagar • Dec 12 '20

You mean if I use PayPal I am going to be charged $5?

Is there any other alternative if I don't wish to pay?

Bobby • Dec 13 '20

Currently, you could choose only between PayPal and Credit card payments.

Guryash Singh • Dec 14 '20

Same here, but I will try risking $5 for learning something new!

Kristijan Kanalaš • Dec 10 '20

Hey Chris, I would like to ask if it's possible to enter multiple times with separate projects?

Chris Sev • Dec 10 '20

Definitely! Highly encouraged to do so. I will be!

Christopher Wray • Dec 11 '20

Hey Chris! Does moving existing sites over to the app platform count towards the hackathon, or no?

Bobby • Dec 18 '20

Hi there 👋

I believe that it should be ok as long as you deploy the site on the App platform and the project is opensource. Also make sure to add the Deploy to DigitalOcean button for some extra points.

krishna kakade • Dec 19 '20

i need a help with this

krishna kakade 🔯🌍

@krishnadevz

i am looking for collaborator for #dohackathon from @digitalocean and @ThePracticalDev
i am having idea and day 1 article everything ready but the issue is i don't having paypal and credit your brother/friend need a help #DEVCommunity #100DaysOfCode

06:54 AM - 19 Dec 2020

11 3

Anup Aglawe • Jan 8 '21

I have a doubt regarding how routes are setup for a static sites and it's corresponding web service.
My specific use case is to implement GitHub oauth on my react/express/GraphQL application.

Locally everything works fine, I have a button which redirects my react app to localhost:4000/auth/GitHub , which gets redirected to GitHub oauth page and then successful login redirects back localhost:3000 (react app).

But on my app platform, I can see only a single APP_URL. I'm confused which goes where and GitHub oauth requires app url & callback url ( localhost:3000 & localhost:4000/user/signin/callback ) this works well in my local env. But not sure what should I put when in production.

Ayan Banerjee • Jan 9 '21

It appears you need two separate apps for the frontend and backend. In that scenario, simply create 2 apps in the app platform.

Anup Aglawe • Jan 9 '21

But the straight forward way seems to be just adding a static site component and web service component, and most probably they were meant to be used in that manner. (and not creating separate apps for client and server ).

Also, if I add a http route let's say /api on my web service component. I can access GraphQL endpoints by ${APP_URL}/api/graphql

Ayan Banerjee • Jan 9 '21

Yes, thanks. That seems to be a much cleaner way!

krishna kakade • Dec 19 '20

if i added my credit card to DigitalOcean how many applications i can host with help of 50$ credit

Bobby • Dec 19 '20

According to the official documentation, the App Platform has three pricing tiers:

Starter: Free. Good for trying App Platform and deploying static sites. You can build and deploy 3 static sites for free on the Starter tier. Every additional static site costs $3/mo.
Basic: Starts at $5/month (for one container). Good for prototyping apps.
Professional: Starts at $12/month (for one container). Good for deploying production apps.

For more information you can take a look at the documentation here:

digitalocean.com/docs/app-platform/

Anup Aglawe • Dec 30 '20 • Edited

Hey I'm developing an application as a part of this hackathon.
I see a strict credit card requirement while signing on digital ocean. Is there any workaround for this, at least for students?

Gracie Gregory (she/her) • Dec 10 '20

I can't wait to see what everyone builds for this hackathon — especially for the Random Roulette category 🎉

Bobby • Dec 10 '20

Good luck everyone 🙌

Chris Sev • Dec 10 '20

What are you gonna build Bobby?

Bobby • Dec 10 '20

I'm planning to build a website for the opensource Introduction to Bash scripting eBook!

I'm planning to use TailwindCSS 🤘 and also the site will include an interactive training section based on Katacoda. 😁

Bobby • Dec 10 '20

What about you Chris?

Chris Sev • Dec 10 '20

Personal site/portfolio. Next + Tailwind + Strapi or Statamic.

And streaming it all!

Bobby • Dec 10 '20

That’s awesome! I’ll definitely make sure to join those streams 👏

Ben Halpern The DEV Team • Dec 10 '20

Let's do this

Chris Sev • Dec 10 '20

Right on! I'm planning on building my personal site (finally!)

Strapi or Statamic backend
Next.js frontend
Tailwind for styling

Raman Sharma • Dec 10 '20

This is exciting.

Here is a post I wrote recently that describes some of the cool things you can do with App Platform:

DigitalOcean App Platform talks at the deploy conference

Raman Sharma ・ Nov 16 '20 ・ 2 min read

#digitalocean #dodeploy #cloud #cloudnative

Matt Cowley • Dec 10 '20

:party-parrot:

Chris Sev • Dec 10 '20

:party-shark:

kuberdenis • Dec 11 '20

And I thought the Slack spirit won't haunt me when I change the company (using Teams now)...

Arit Developer • Dec 10 '20

This is going to be EPIC! 🤩. 🥳

spiritupbro • Dec 10 '20

OMG finally let me join this hackathon and win this one hopefully let's go everybody!!!

Bobby • Dec 11 '20

Good luck to you too! 🙌

spiritupbro • Dec 11 '20

lets go my man!!

David Mendoza (He/Him) • Dec 10 '20

Hey guys I'm a full stack developer in MERN stack if someone needs help, let me know I might like the proyect and help you to develop it

IroncladDev • Dec 15 '20

Important Question

Can you use another app building platform like Heroku, Repl.it, of Github pages to submit your entry or does the specific app building platform have to be specifically digitalOcean's?

Bobby • Dec 16 '20

Hey 👋

The main objective of the Hackaton is to build an app that is deployed to the DigitalOcean App Platofrm specifically.

IroncladDev • Dec 16 '20

Okay. It's just that I'm fifteen and don't have a credit card yet so I can't get access to the digitalOcean app platform.

I'll just wait for another hackathon to appear.
Thanks.

Bobby • Dec 16 '20

It looks like that according to the official rules you need to be +18 in order to participate:

dev.to/page/official-hackathon-rules

"ELIGIBILITY. The Contest is a skill-based contest open to individuals who are at least age eighteen (18) or older or are the legal age of majority in the jurisdiction in which they reside and capable of forming a binding contract with Sponsor as of the date of entry, that are DEV Members (defined below) and have an active email account and Internet access throughout the Entry Period. "