Shell Script

Suppose you have to trigger (start) Travis but not through making a commit but through clicking a button on the webapp of the Meilix Generator. Through the webapp of Meilix Generator, we can pass the tag of the build which will be initiated and can also get the build link which is built by Travis.
Heroku is the place where we have deployed our webapp and through a button on the webapp that we used to start the build on the Travis. We have the access to give a tag to the build and with the help of this, we can even predict the URL of the build beforehand. So one can use it for its own personal project in a number of ways. And how I used this feature in Meilix Generator using Meilix script is described below:

How I used this idea

FOSSASIA meilix repository consists the script of a Linux Operating System based on Lubuntu. It uses Travis to build that script to result in a release of an iso file.

Now we thought an idea of building an autonomous system to start this build and get the release and in the meanwhile also make some required changes to the script to get it into the OS. We came up with an idea of a webapp which ask user its email id and tag of the build and till now a picture from the user which will be set as a wallpaper. It means the user would be able to config its distro according to its need through the graphical interface without a single line to code from the user end.

Through the webapp, a build button is taken as an input to go to a build page which triggers the Travis with the same user configuration to build the iso and deploy it on Github page. The user gets the link to the build on the next page only.

How I implemented this idea

Thanks to Travis API without which our idea is impossible to implement. We used a shell script to outframe our idea. The script takes the input of the user’s, repository, and branch to decide to where the trigger to take place.

There are two files one as travis_token as:

fossasia meilix master    # in the format of user repo branch

And script.sh as:  

#!/bin/bash
cat travis_tokens | while read line;     # this lines takes input of the user, repo and branch
do
    array=(${line})
    user="${array[0]}"
    project="${array[1]}"
    len=${#array[@]}
    for ((i=2; i<len; i++)); do
        branch="${array[i]}"            # supplied each value as variable
        body="{\"request\":{
            \"branch\":\"${branch}\",
            \"config\":{
                \"env\":{
                    \"email\":\"${email}\",    # supplied email and travis tag as environment variable
                    \"TRAVIS_TAG\":\"${TRAVIS_TAG}\"
                }
            }
    }}"
    echo "This Link Will be ready in approx 20 minutes"
    echo "https://github.com/fossasia/meilix/releases/download/${TRAVIS_TAG}/meilix-zesty-`date +%Y%m%d`-i386.iso"                  # a pre-predication of the link, we provide tag from user and date from system.
        curl -s -X POST \           # sending an API POST request to Travis to trigger the build of most recent commit 
            -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
            -H "Accept: application/json" \
            -H "Travis-API-Version: 3" \
            -H "Authorization: token ${KEY}" \     # this is stored in Heroku as KEY as environment variable and supplied from there only
            -d "${body}" \
            "https://api.travis-ci.org/repo/${user}%2F${project}/requests"  #%2 is used to interpret user and repo name as a single URL segment.
    done
done

After the trigger, you will get email which consists of a downloadable link to the iso.

How can this idea be helpful to a developer

There are lots of ways a developer can use this idea out. If a developer wants their user to automatically trigger the build and get the release build directly.

One can use it to set even the commit message through the shell script and customizing build configuration like replace, merge or deep_merge a configuration with the original .travis.yml file present in source repo.

Useful repositories and link which uses this:

Know more about Travis API v3:
Triggering the build
API blog

Have a look at our webapp and generate your own iso:
https://melix-generator.herokuapp.com/

Source code here:
https://github.com/fossasia/meilix-generator
https://github.com/fossasia/meilix