Introduction

A domain represents a unique name for each user within which each user application must exist. OpenShift users cannot create an application until they have a valid domain. The domain name becomes a part of the application URL. For example, if your domain name is foo and your application name is bar, the application URL will be http://bar-foo.rhcloud.com. Every OpenShift account must have at least one domain associated with it. The OpenShift Online free tier does not allow a user to create more than one domain, but you can create more than one domain in paid tiers. The domains make it possible for users to choose any valid name for their application. They allow two or more users to have the same name for their applications. For example, user A can have an application named bar in domain foo, and similarly, user B can also have an application named bar in domain test. Once a user has a valid domain, he/she can use any valid name for their application.

Team collaboration is one of the essential features of modern-day software development. Whether you are working on an open source project or an enterprise project, you need to collaborate and work with others. A group of people may work together to make a software project a success. A domain makes it possible to work as a team because you can add other users to your domain, giving them privileges to work with your application. This makes it very easy for different users to collaborate on a project and work together. You can add a user to your domain either as a viewer, editor, or an admin. Recipes 4 through 6 will cover these in detail.

A domain also helps us incorporate the concept of environments in our applications. You can have different domains for different environments. One can be used as a development environment, one as a quality assurance environment, and another for production. This allows you to give different people access to different domains. Your developers can have access to development and quality assurance domains but not to the production domain.