GitHub Actions

This section provides a step-by-step guide to setting up a CI/CD pipeline in GitHub Actions using the provided sample Bash or Powershell scripts.

Before setting up the pipeline in GitHub, make sure that the following steps from the Configuring a CI/CD pipeline are done:

Pick a Cloud project
Activate CI/CD Flow

Next you will need to define your pipeline in YAML, and use it to interact with the Umbraco Cloud API.

The Umbraco CI/CD Team have created a sample pipeline for GitHub Actions.

The Scripts are provided as is. This means that the scripts will do the bare minimum for a pipeline that is utilizing the CI/CD flow. Adapt and integrate them into your own pipelines to gain the ability to do deployments to your Umbraco Cloud projects.

The sample includes YAML-files and custom Powershell and Bash scripts to interact with the Umbraco Cloud API.

You can get the samples for both GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps from the Github repository.

Import Cloud project repository to GitHub

Go to your repositories in GitHub and click on "New".

Create a new empty repository, and note down the clone URL.
Go to the Umbraco Cloud Portal and clone your cloud project down locally. This article describes how you can find the clone URL.
Now working locally remove the Git Remote called origin, which points to Umbraco Cloud

git remote remove origin

Optionally rename branch master to main

# optional step
git branch -m  main
git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/main

Add a new remote called origin and pointing to the GitHub clone URL and push

git remote add origin https://github.com/{your-organization}/{your-repository}.git
git push -u origin --all

Now we can move on to setting up a pipeline.

Set up Github repository variables

The pipeline needs to know which Umbraco Cloud project to deploy to. In order to do this you will need the Project ID and the API Key. This article describes how to get those values.

Now go to the repository in GitHub, and click on the Settings section.
Expand secrets and variables in the left-hand menu titled Security and click on Actions.

Create a repository secret called UMBRACO_CLOUD_API_KEY with the API Key value from the Umbraco Portal.
Create another repository secret with the name PROJECT_ID and the Project ID value from the Umbraco Portal.

If you want to use other names for the secrets, you need to rename the secrets variables in each of main.yml's jobs.

jobs:
  cloud-sync:
    uses: ./.github/workflows/cloud-sync.yml
    secrets:
      projectId: ${{ secrets.PROJECT_ID }} # change the part inside the curly braces
      umbracoCloudApiKey: ${{ secrets.UMBRACO_CLOUD_API_KEY }} # change the part inside the curly braces

  cloud-deployment:
    needs: cloud-sync
    uses: ./.github/workflows/cloud-deployment.yml
    secrets:
      projectId: ${{ secrets.PROJECT_ID }} # change the part inside the curly braces
      umbracoCloudApiKey: ${{ secrets.UMBRACO_CLOUD_API_KEY }} # change the part inside the curly braces

Now Github is set up with the needed information to be able to run a deployment back to Umbraco Cloud.

Next up it setting up the actual pipeline.

Allow GitHub to commit to your repository

The sample pipelines have a job called cloud-sync. This job is responsible for checking for changes in your Umbraco Cloud project, fetching them, and applying them back to your repository. In order for this to work, you need to give the GITHUB_TOKEN write permissions to the repository during workflow runs.

This is how you can grant these permissions:

Working in your repository on GitHub, click on Settings in the top right
In the left sidebar, click on Actions and then on General
Scroll down to the Workflow permissions sections
Select the Read and write permissions
Click save

Set up the GitHub Actions pipeline

While working with the project on your local machine, follow these steps to prepare the pipeline, using the samples from the repository.

Download the provided sample scripts as ZIP from the GitHub repository. Click on "Code" and then choose "Download ZIP". Then unzip it and use those files for the next steps.

Select your preferred scripting language:

For a pipeline that uses Powershell scripts you will need the following files:

From the root folder
- cloud.zipignore
From the powershell folder
- Get-LatestDeployment.ps1
- Get-ChangesById.ps1
- New-Deployment.ps1
- Add-DeploymentPackage.ps1
- Start-Deployment.ps1
- Test-DeploymentStatus.ps1
From the powershell/github folder
- main.yml
- cloud-sync.yml
- cloud-deployment.yml

Do the following to prepare the pipeline:

Copy the cloud.zipignore file to the root of your repository
Make a copy of the .gitignore from your repository and call the copy cloud.gitignore
- Both files should be in the root of your repository
- In the bottom of the .gitignore file add the line **/git-patch.diff
Also in the root, create a folder called .github
Inside .github create two additional folders
- workflows
- powershell
Copy the 3 YAML files from the github folder into the workflows folder
Copy the Powershell scripts from the powershell folder to the powershell folder
Note: If you have not changed the branch to main, then in the main.yml file change the branch from mainto master.
Commit the all changes, and push to GitHub

For a pipeline that uses Bash scripts you will need the following files:

From the root folder
- cloud.zipignore
From the bash folder
- get_latest_deployment.sh
- get_changes_by_id.sh
- create_deployment.sh
- upload_package.sh
- start_deployment.sh
- get_deployment_status.sh
From the bash/github folder
- main.yml
- cloud-sync.yml
- cloud-deployment.yml

Do the following to prepare the pipeline:

Copy the cloud.zipignore file to the root of your repository
Make a copy of the .gitignore from your repository and call the copy cloud.gitignore
- Both files should be in the root of your repository
- In the bottom of the .gitignore file add the line **/git-patch.diff
Also in the root, create a folder called .github
Inside .github create two additional folders
- workflows
- scripts
Copy the 3 YAML files from the github folder into the workflows folder
Copy the Bash scripts from the bash folder to the scripts folder
Note: If you have not changed the branch to main, then in the main.yml file change the branch from mainto master.
Commit the all changes, and push to GitHub

The push will start a new pipeline run.

Optional: Test the pipeline

With everything set up, you may want to confirm that Umbraco Cloud reflects the changes you are sending via your pipeline.

While working on you project locally, add a new Document type.

Commit the change to main branch (or master if you did not change the branch name) and push to your repository.
The pipeline starts to run
Once the pipeline is done log into Backoffice on your left-most environment in Umbraco Cloud
Go to the Settings section and see that your new Document type has been deployed

High level overview of the pipeline components

The mentioned scripts are provided as a starting point. It is recommended that you familiarize yourself with the scripts and with documentation related to how to use GitHub Actions.

The scripts demonstrates the following:

How to sync your GitHub repository with the left-most project environment in Umbraco Cloud
How to deploy changes to the left-most project environment in Umbraco Cloud

Main

The main.yml is the main pipeline, and is the one that will be triggered on a push to main branch. You can configure a different trigger behavior in this file.

You can add your Build and Test jobs between the cloud-sync and cloud-deployment jobs. Keep in mind that you do not need to retain the dotnet build artifact for upload later. The cloud-deployment job will take care of packaging all your source code and upload to Umbraco Cloud.

Cloud-sync

The cloud-sync.yml shows how you can sync your Github repository with the left-most environment of your Cloud project. In this sample, it accepts any change from the API and applies and commits it back to the branch which triggered the pipeline. However the commit does not trigger the pipeline again.

If you don't want the pipeline to commit back to the triggering branch, this is where you need to change the pipeline.

Cloud-deployment

The cloud-deployment.yml show how you can deploy your repository to the left-most environment of your Cloud project. The sample shows how to prepare for deployment, request the deployment and wait for cloud to finish.

There are a couple of things here to be aware of:

We are overwriting the .gitignore file with cloud.gitignore. This is a way to accommodate your gitignore-needs when working locally. For instance you might want to ignore frontend builds, but you want them build and published to cloud.
We have a special cloud.zipignore file. This is a convenient way to tell the pipeline which files not to include when creating the zip package to send to cloud.

If you have frontend assets that needs to be build (using tools like npm/yarn or others), you should add the needed steps before Zip Source Code. This is to ensure that the fresh frontend assets will be part of the package to be sent to cloud.

Further information

GitHub Actions Documentation

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Last updated 10 days ago