The Cloud Extension
To run a project on Craft Cloud, it must require our first-party craftcms/cloud package.
In technical terms, the Cloud extension is a self-bootstrapping Yii module. Practically, it provides…
- …a special filesystem type that interfaces seamlessly with Cloud’s storage solution;
- …automatic and reliable configuration of your project’s database connection, cache, queue, and other application components;
- …Twig helpers for generating special URLs;
For most projects—and in local development—the extension will be largely undetectable. It only initializes functionality in environments that suggest (through the presence of special variables) it is necessary.
Note that Cloud applies additional configuration directly to Craft via special, non-optional environment overrides.
Installation #
You can install the extension with one command, in any project running Craft CMS 4.5.10 or later:
php craft setup/cloud
If you would prefer to use Composer directly, require the craftcms/cloud package. After installation, perform one-time setup by running php craft cloud/setup.
You will be prompted for some information about your project, and the wizard will write a Craft Cloud configuration file to the project’s root.
Special Features #
Cloud Filesystem #
We recommend that new projects use the Craft Cloud filesystem type for all asset volumes. Other remote filesystem types may be compatible with Cloud, but will not support automatic fallback to your local disk, in development environments.
Application Components #
The extension replaces configuration for Craft’s cache, database, mutex, queue, and session application components to ensure that they are configured in a way that is compatible with Cloud infrastructure.
Resource URLs #
By default, Craft publishes asset bundles to the public web root and generates URLs according to resourceBasePath and resourceBaseUrl. These settings have no effect, when running on Cloud.
To conserve resources, Cloud’s compute layer doesn’t serve any static asset requests. Instead, these files are pre-generated and pushed to our CDN when your project is deployed.
Build Artifacts
Other static assets in your web root will also be uploaded to our CDN at build time. See our article on build artifacts for more information about generating URLs for these files.
Additional Configuration #
The Cloud extension includes some additional settings, but they are intended only for debugging and advanced use cases, like emulating Craft Cloud infrastructure, locally. Configuration that is necessary for your site to run on Cloud will be applied automatically.
Further Reading #
Additional technical details and the extension’s source are available in the readme on GitHub.
If you encounter a bug or compatibility issues with another plugin (public or private), please file an issue or contact support!