Creating an Internal Developer Platform with a Streamlit App

Introduction

An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) enables teams to abstract away infrastructure complexities and provide developers with a self-service interface to deploy and manage their applications. By leveraging Streamlit, a popular Python framework for building interactive web apps, you can create an intuitive and efficient IDP tailored to your organization's needs.

In this article, we'll walk through the steps to build an IDP using Streamlit. We'll cover setting up the environment, implementing core features like deployment management and resource monitoring, and deploying the Streamlit app.

Prerequisites

Before starting, ensure you have the following:

1. Python 3.8 or higher
2. Streamlit installed
3. Access to your infrastructure or a cloud provider API (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure)
4. Familiarity with Python and basic DevOps concepts

Step 1: Setting Up the Environment

1. Install Python and Streamlit:
2. Initialize the Project: Create a new directory and initialize it with:
3. Create the Main File: Create a main.py file:

Step 2: Designing the IDP Interface

Here’s an example layout for the IDP:

1. Sidebar Navigation: Use Streamlit's sidebar for navigation.
2. Main Sections:

Example Code:

import streamlit as st

def main():
    st.set_page_config(page_title="Internal Developer Platform", layout="wide")

    st.sidebar.title("Navigation")
    section = st.sidebar.radio("Go to", ("Home", "Deployments", "Monitoring", "Configuration"))

    if section == "Home":
        st.title("Welcome to the Internal Developer Platform")
        st.write("Use the navigation menu to access features.")
    elif section == "Deployments":
        deployments()
    elif section == "Monitoring":
        monitoring()
    elif section == "Configuration":
        configuration()

def deployments():
    st.title("Deployments")
    st.text_input("Application Name", placeholder="Enter app name")
    st.selectbox("Environment", ["Development", "Staging", "Production"])
    if st.button("Deploy"):
        st.success("Deployment started!")

def monitoring():
    st.title("Monitoring")
    st.line_chart([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])  # Replace with real data
    st.text_area("Logs", height=200)

def configuration():
    st.title("Configuration")
    st.text_input("Update Environment Variables")
    if st.button("Save Changes"):
        st.success("Configuration updated!")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
        

Step 3: Adding Deployment Logic

Integrate APIs from your cloud provider or use custom scripts to handle deployments. For instance, to deploy on AWS using boto3:

import boto3

def deploy_to_aws(app_name, environment):
    client = boto3.client('ecs')
    response = client.run_task(
        cluster=f"{environment}-cluster",
        taskDefinition=f"{app_name}-task",
        count=1
    )
    return response

# Inside the deployments function:
if st.button("Deploy"):
    response = deploy_to_aws(app_name, environment)
    st.write(response)
    st.success("Deployment triggered successfully.")
        

Step 4: Deploying the Streamlit App

1. Run Locally: Start the app locally:

streamlit run main.py        

1. Deploy to Cloud: Deploy your app using services like AWS EC2, Google Cloud Run, or Streamlit Community Cloud.

Conclusion

By combining Streamlit’s simplicity with powerful backend integrations, you can build an IDP that empowers your developers to focus on writing code rather than managing infrastructure. This approach can be extended with custom plugins, authentication, and advanced monitoring. Streamlit is an excellent choice for building an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) due to its simplicity and developer-friendly nature. Its Python-native framework and pre-built widgets enable fast development without requiring frontend expertise. Streamlit easily integrates with APIs, supports data visualization, and provides real-time interactivity. It’s open-source, cost-effective, and deployable on various platforms, making it flexible for different infrastructures. With a sleek design and active community, Streamlit empowers teams to create intuitive and scalable IDPs quickly.