The Be Sure Blog

GitHub Actions are used to be a part of CI/CD. They are triggered by so called events, like pushing or pulling to/from a GitHub repository. No third-party tool is needed, when your code is already on GitHub. The setup is quite easy and it's a nice tool for developers.

GitHub event examples:

- Pull request

- Contributor joined

- Issue created

- Pull request merged

- New push

GitHub Actions listen to those events and respond with a workflow. Examples:

- Sort, label, assign, reproduce a newly submitted issue

- After a new commit was pushed: Test, build, push, deploy to server

Different Pipeline examples:

- Node.js App -> Build a Docker Image -> Push to a repository -> Deploy to a production server

- Java App -> Integration Tests Linux/Windows -> Build Docker Image -> Push to AWS repository -> Deploy to AWS EKS

Instead of manually configuring everything of this. We can now define the environment, like:

- Node and Docker

- With a specific version

- Connected to this specific target and push the code there

GitHub offers workflow templates that are ready to use. In a repository, navigate to "Actions" and click on "New Workflow". Pick from the categories:

- Deployment

- Continuous integration

- Automation

- Pages

When selecting a workflow, GitHub automatically creates the .github/workflows/name.yml directory & file and provides to .yml code within. For example, the .yml code of "Deploy a container to an Azure Web App" looks like this:

name: Build and deploy a container to an Azure Web App
env:
AZURE_WEBAPP_NAME: your-app-name  # set this to the name of your Azure Web App
on:
push:
branches: [ "main" ]
workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v3


name: Set up Docker Buildx
uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v1


name: Log in to GitHub container registry
uses: docker/login-action@v1.10.0
with:
registry: ghcr.io
username: ${{ github.actor }}
password: ${{ github.token }}


name: Lowercase the repo name and username
run: echo "REPO=${GITHUB_REPOSITORY,,}" >>${GITHUB_ENV}


name: Build and push container image to registry
uses: docker/build-push-action@v2
with:
push: true
tags: ghcr.io/${{ env.REPO }}:${{ github.sha }}
file: ./Dockerfile


deploy:
permissions:
contents: none
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
needs: build
environment:
name: 'Development'
url: ${{ steps.deploy-to-webapp.outputs.webapp-url }}
steps:


name: Lowercase the repo name and username
run: echo "REPO=${GITHUB_REPOSITORY,,}" >>${GITHUB_ENV}


name: Deploy to Azure Web App
id: deploy-to-webapp
uses: azure/webapps-deploy@v2
with:
app-name: ${{ env.AZURE_WEBAPP_NAME }}
publish-profile: ${{ secrets.AZURE_WEBAPP_PUBLISH_PROFILE }}
images: 'ghcr.io/${{ env.REPO }}:${{ github.sha }}'