RDN Labs

Introduction to GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions is a powerful automation tool that allows developers to build, test, and deploy code directly from their GitHub repositories. With GitHub Actions, you can create custom workflows to automate tasks such as running tests, building applications, and deploying to production environments.

Why Use GitHub Actions for CI/CD?

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) pipelines are essential for modern development teams. CI ensures that code changes are automatically tested and integrated into the main branch, while CD automates the deployment process, allowing you to ship code faster and more reliably. GitHub Actions makes it easy to set up these pipelines with minimal configuration, directly within your GitHub repository.

Key Concepts of GitHub Actions

Workflows: A workflow is a configurable automated process made up of one or more jobs that run when triggered by events such as pushing code to a repository.
Jobs: A job is a set of steps that execute on the same runner. Jobs can run sequentially or in parallel depending on how the workflow is configured.
Steps: Steps are individual tasks that make up a job. Each step can run commands or use actions.
Actions: Actions are reusable pieces of code that can be used to automate tasks such as testing, building, and deploying your application.

Setting Up Your First GitHub Actions Workflow

Setting up a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions is as simple as creating a YAML file within your repository. Below is an example of a basic CI workflow that runs unit tests on every push:

name: CI Pipeline

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '14'

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install

      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test

In this workflow, every time a commit is pushed to the main branch, GitHub Actions will:

Check out the repository's code.
Set up Node.js version 14.
Install the project’s dependencies.
Run the test suite using npm test.

Deploying with GitHub Actions

Once your code is tested, you can extend your workflow to deploy your application. For example, you can use GitHub Actions to deploy to AWS, Google Cloud, or even a custom server. Here’s an example of how you might deploy a Node.js application to AWS Elastic Beanstalk:

name: CI/CD Pipeline

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Deploy to Elastic Beanstalk
        uses: einaregilsson/beanstalk-deploy@v19
        with:
          aws_access_key: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          aws_secret_key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
          application_name: "my-application"
          environment_name: "production"
          region: "us-west-2"

In this deployment workflow, GitHub Actions will deploy your application to AWS Elastic Beanstalk whenever changes are pushed to the main branch.

Conclusion