netlify-deployer

Deploy website changes from a local directory to Netlify.

Netlify CLI is nice, but it's heavy for a lot of the automation tasks I use it for. I created this tool to implement the parts that I need regularly in deployment automation.

Installation

Use Go CLI tools to install:

go get gitlab.com/lepovirta/netlify-deployer

Usage

netlify-deployer

The tool uses these environment variables:

• NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN: Authentication token for logging into Netlify
• NETLIFY_SITE_ID: The ID of the site
• NETLIFY_DIRECTORY: The directory of files to deploy
• NETLIFY_DRAFT: Set true to make a draft deployment. Set false to make a production deployment. Default: true.
• NETLIFY_DEPLOYMESSAGE: A short message to include in the deployment log
• NETLIFY_LOGLEVEL: Log level for application logs. Default: warn
• NETLIFY_LOGFORMAT: Format of the application logs. Either text for text logs or json for JSON logs. Default: text

The tool prints out the unique URL for the deployment, which you can use to view site.

Docker images

Docker images for this tool are hosted in the Gitlab Container Registry. This is the name of the image that is available

registry.gitlab.com/lepovirta/netlify-deployer

The image has the following tags available:

• latest: Latest version from the master branch with just the netlify-deployer binary included (i.e. Dockerfile.minimal)
• ci: Latest version from the master branch with the netlify-deployer binary and additional tools useful with CI platforms such as Gitlab CI (i.e. Dockerfile.ci)

Integration with Gitlab CI

Here's how you can deploy your site from Gitlab CI to Netlify using the netlify-deployer Docker image. This integration does the following:

• Publish your site when running the pipeline on master branch
• Publish a draft site when running the pipeline on any other branch
• Post a link to your merge requests when the draft site is available (requires a Gitlab access token)

First, set up your Netlify access credentials in your repository's CI/CD settings:

1. Go to your repository page in Gitlab
2. Go to Settings > CI / CD > Variables
3. Add a new variable NETLIFY_SITE_ID and use your Netlify site's ID as the value
4. Add a new variable NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN and use your Netlify access token as the value
5. (Optional) If you want to post draft links to your merge requests, you need to also add a new variable GITLAB_ACCESS_TOKEN and use a Gitlab access token as the value

Next, your .gitlab-ci.yml should be made to look something like this:

stages:
- # Other stages go here
- build-site
- publish-site

variables:
  # You can use whatever directory here you want.
  NETLIFY_DIRECTORY: public

build-site:
  stage: build-site
  script:
  - # Use whatever commands you need here to generate your site.
  - # Place the site to $NETLIFY_DIRECTORY
  artifacts:
    paths:
    - $NETLIFY_DIRECTORY

# You can run this same job in both master and MR branches.
# It will automatically publish the site as a draft when run on non-master branches.
# If you want to publish your site on another branch other than master,
# set the variable NETLIFY_MAIN_BRANCH to point to some other branch.
publish-site:
  stage: publish-site
  image: registry.gitlab.com/lepovirta/netlify-deployer:ci
  script:
  - gitlab-deploy-site

For a more detailed guide, see this blog post: Website previews for custom Netlify deployments using GitLab CI

Building

Make sure you have Go 1.13+ installed. After that, run these commands:

go mod download
go build

This should produce an executable binary called netlify-deployer.

After you've built the app, you can build your own Docker image using the Dockerfiles in the repository:

docker build -f Dockerfile.ci -t netlify-deployer-ci .
docker build -f Dockerfile.minimal -t netlify-deployer .

License

MIT License

See LICENSE for more details.