A simple file format for documenting services used by web apps
Web apps often use a dozen or more third-party services and it can quickly become difficult to remember which services are used by the app, especially when working with many apps.
We can fix this by adding a list of services to our app.
The list should:
- Be named
SERVICES.YML - Be stored in the root of the app
- Use the YAML format when possible
- Use single words to describe service types
- Start with the hosting provider
- Place all other service types in alphabetical order
- Be updated when you change service providers
hosting: digitalocean
advertising: google
email:
transactional: postmark
spam: akismet
mapping:
geocoding: google
maps: apple
monitoring: sentry
storage:
amazon:
- cloudfront
- s3
ENV variables are used to store app secrets and other configuration settings. We want a short list that we can read and understand in a glance.
Gemfiles are used to manage dependencies. Usually, most gems in a Gemfile are not service related, so that makes it harder to find the ones that are services.
README files are often very long and take a considerable amount of time to read.
No, not at all. Just start with YAML. But, if you need to use non-YAML syntax later, that's fine. This is your list.
Not really, but you're welcome to do so.