Hi, my fellow developers,
After having discovered the top 3 features I like to use with GitHub Actions, Iโd like to share how you can easily create your own pipelines for a JHipster generated project using the ci-cd generator, with multiple choices of pipeline solutions.
Letโs discover this awesome feature to build your pipelines quickly!
Before diving into the details about building a pipeline, Iโd like to remind you how JHipster is built. When you run the CLI using the jhipster
command, a few parts of the generators that compose JHipster will be launched one after the other, following the core engine definitions of this sequence.
However, some of the sub-generators included in the JHipster npm package can be called manually to complete a specific task, such as creating a pipeline file definition for an existing application.
Requirements
To generate a pipeline you need to have an existing JHipster application or create a new one.
- Install the last JHipster version:
npm i generator-jhipster
- Run the default JHipster command:
jhipster
- Select the options you want or use the defaults
Once the project is generated and the npm install
command has been run, you can go ahead and create a pipeline.
Generate a pipeline file
In your project folder, run the following command: jhipster ci-cd
.
The first step is to select what kind of pipeline you want to generate.
JHipster currently supports Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Travis CI, and Circle CI.
According to the type of platform chosen, you will need to answer some questions that could be specific to it or ask for each of these provided solutions.
Here is an example of questions you have to ask if you choose GitHub Actions:
Each task adds a new step in the pipeline or adapts the configuration to match the user requirements. As per usual with JHipster, the flexibility of the generator offers a few different capabilities in the final generated product.
It could be, for example, adding a security step with Snyk dependency scanning or analyzing the code with Sonar.
By choosing Sonar here, I answered two more questions to configure it and make it work out of the box.
Finally, the pipeline definition file is generated at this path.github/workflows/github-actions.yml
The GitHub Actions Workflow file in detail
The Github Actions generated file contains a lot of defined actions to have an out-of-the-box viable CI:
name: Application CI
on: [push, pull_request]
jobs:
pipeline:
name: cicd pipeline
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: "!contains(github.event.head_commit.message, '[ci skip]') && !contains(github.event.head_commit.message, '[skip ci]') && !contains(github.event.pull_request.title, '[skip ci]') && !contains(github.event.pull_request.title, '[ci skip]')"
timeout-minutes: 40
env:
NODE_VERSION: 14.17.6
SPRING_OUTPUT_ANSI_ENABLED: DETECT
SPRING_JPA_SHOW_SQL: false
JHI_DISABLE_WEBPACK_LOGS: true
NG_CLI_ANALYTICS: false
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v2
- uses: actions/setup-node@v1
with:
node-version: 14.17.6
- uses: actions/setup-java@v2
with:
distribution: 'temurin'
java-version: 11
- name: Install node.js packages
run: npm install
- name: Run backend test
run: |
chmod +x mvnw
npm run ci:backend:test
- name: Run frontend test
run: npm run ci:frontend:test
- name: Analyze code with SonarQube
env:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
SONAR_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.SONAR_TOKEN }}
run: |
if [ ! -z "$SONAR_TOKEN" ]; then
./mvnw -ntp initialize sonar:sonar -Dsonar.host.url=https://sonarcloud.io
else
echo No SONAR_TOKEN, skipping...
fi
- name: Package application
run: npm run java:jar:prod
By using this solution you will be able to leverage the community knowledge on CI definition and use the proper version for each tool needed such as Java and NodeJS versions. If you upgrade your JHipster version, you can generate the pipeline file again to upgrade it or upgrade yours.
This workflow executes the following steps:
- Checkout the project
- Install NodeJS
- Install Java
- Run the npm install command
- Run both backend and frontend tests
- Run the Sonar analysis we added during the previous step
- Package the application
Update the pipeline to automatically deploy your application to Heroku
In order to turn your pipeline into a continuous deployment one, JHipster provides a simple solution using Heroku as a provider.
You simply need to select the following task โDeploy to Herokuโ when you generate the pipeline.
Then a new task is added in the pipeline named Deploy to Heroku,
launched only when new commits are added on the main branch. To be sure this works, you need to add a new secret in your GitHub repository HEROKU_API_KEY
and have a Heroku account.
Conclusion
I hope this article helps you to understand this feature from JHipster and you are willing to use it in your applications to create great pipelines to automatically test them and reach your KPIs.
Of course, a lot of details remain to be discovered, such as the different platforms to run your pipelines or all the options provided by JHipster.
It could be another story Iโd like to share with youโฆ Stay tuned!
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