Demystifying a travis.yml file

In this blog post, we are going to demystify a travis.yml file. For reference, we will be using the travis configuration used in the  SUSI skill CMS project. But before delving into it, I would like to just give a brief introduction about Continuous Integration (CI) and Travis CI. What is CI and Travis ? Continuous Integration represents the practice of integrating a piece of work as early as possible instead of later so that one can receive immediate and frequent feedback on things that are wrong. “ Continuous Integration is the practice of merging all developer working copies to a shared mainline several times a day. ” -Wikipedia Travis CI is a hosted continuous integration platform that is free for all open source projects hosted on Github. With just a file called .travis.yml containing some information about our project, we can trigger automated builds with every change to our code base in the master branch, other branches or even a pull request. sudo: required dist: trusty language: node_js node_js: - 6 script: - npm test after_success: - bash ./pr_deploy.sh - bash ./deploy.sh cache: directories: - node_modules branches: only: - master Travis configuration file of susi_skill_cms Part-wise explanation of the file When specifying sudo: required, Travis CI runs each build in an isolated Google Compute Engine virtual machine that offer a vanilla build environment for every build. This has the advantage that no state persists between builds, offering a clean slate and making sure that the tests run in an environment built from scratch. Builds have access to a variety of services for data storage and messaging, and can install anything that’s required for them to run. The keyword dist represents the virtualization environment that is being used. trusty here refers to the distribution of the Linux environment used. The keyword language represents the programming language that is be used for the project. The language used for the project is nodeJs. Then follows the version details of node_js that is to be used. The node_js version used is 6. This is the step where Travis runs the test script. Unless otherwise specified, it runs the default for the set language. In the case of node, it does node_js. The script stands for the build script that would be executed during the build process. The default build script for nodeJs is npm test. The result of execution of npm test can be found from the package.json file. It executes the npm run lint && react-scripts test --env=jsdom command, which is responsible for checking the linting issues and runs various unit and snapshot tests. We can add multiple lines of command to be executed. The after_success block runs after the entire script is done. It’s the last step in the normal build process has been executed successfully. It has 2 commands to be executed - bash ./pr_deploy.sh : Responsible for making a surge deployment of each PR bash ./deploy.sh : Responsible for making a deployment to master branch Travis CI can cache…

Continue ReadingDemystifying a travis.yml file

Auto Deployment of SUSI Web Chat on gh-pages with Travis-CI

SUSI Web Chat uses Travis CI with a custom build script to deploy itself on gh-pages after every pull request is merged into the project. The build system auto updates the latest changes hosted on chat.susi.ai. In this blog, we will see how to automatically deploy the repository on gh pages. To proceed with auto deploy on gh-pages branch, We first need to setup Travis for the project. Register on https://travis-ci.org/ and turn on the Travis for this repository. Next, we add .travis.yml in the root directory of the project. # Set system config sudo: required dist: trusty language: node_js # Specifying node version node_js: - 6 # Running the test script for the project script: - npm test # Running the deploy script by specifying the location of the script, here ‘deploy.sh’ deploy: provider: script script: "./deploy.sh" # We proceed with the cache if there are no changes in the node_modules cache: directories: - node_modules branches: only: - master To find the code go to https://github.com/fossasia/chat.susi.ai/blob/master/.travis.yml The Travis configuration files will ensure that the project is building for every change made, using npm test command, in our case, it will only consider changes made on the master branch. If one wants to watch other branches one can add the respective branch name in travis configurations. After checking for build passing we need to automatically push the changes made for which we will use a bash script. #!/bin/bash SOURCE_BRANCH="master" TARGET_BRANCH="gh-pages" # Pull requests and commits to other branches shouldn't try to deploy. if [ "$TRAVIS_PULL_REQUEST" != "false" -o "$TRAVIS_BRANCH" != "$SOURCE_BRANCH" ]; then echo "Skipping deploy; The request or commit is not on master" exit 0 fi # Save some useful information REPO=`git config remote.origin.url` SSH_REPO=${REPO/https:\/\/github.com\//git@github.com:} SHA=`git rev-parse --verify HEAD` ENCRYPTED_KEY_VAR="encrypted_${ENCRYPTION_LABEL}_key" ENCRYPTED_IV_VAR="encrypted_${ENCRYPTION_LABEL}_iv" ENCRYPTED_KEY=${!ENCRYPTED_KEY_VAR} ENCRYPTED_IV=${!ENCRYPTED_IV_VAR} openssl aes-256-cbc -K $ENCRYPTED_KEY -iv $ENCRYPTED_IV -in deploy_key.enc -out ../deploy_key -d chmod 600 ../deploy_key eval `ssh-agent -s` ssh-add ../deploy_key # Cloning the repository to repo/ directory, # Creating gh-pages branch if it doesn't exists else moving to that branch git clone $REPO repo cd repo git checkout $TARGET_BRANCH || git checkout --orphan $TARGET_BRANCH cd .. # Setting up the username and email. git config user.name "Travis CI" git config user.email "$COMMIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL" # Cleaning up the old repo's gh-pages branch except CNAME file and 404.html find repo/* ! -name "CNAME" ! -name "404.html" -maxdepth 1 -exec rm -rf {} \; 2> /dev/null cd repo git add --all git commit -m "Travis CI Clean Deploy : ${SHA}" git checkout $SOURCE_BRANCH # Actual building and setup of current push or PR. npm install npm run build mv build ../build/ git checkout $TARGET_BRANCH rm -rf node_modules/ mv ../build/* . cp index.html 404.html # Staging the new build for commit; and then committing the latest build git add -A git commit --amend --no-edit --allow-empty # Deploying only if the build has changed if [ -z `git diff --name-only HEAD HEAD~1` ]; then echo "No Changes in the Build; exiting" exit 0 else # There are changes in the Build; push the…

Continue ReadingAuto Deployment of SUSI Web Chat on gh-pages with Travis-CI

How Meilix Generator sends Email Notifications with SendGrid

We wanted to notify the users once the build was ready for download. To solve this we attempted making an email server on Meilix Generator but that can send email when it starts but it would take around 20 minutes to get the build ready so we thought of checking the deploy link status and send email whenever the link status was available (200) but the problem with this method was that the link can be pre available if ISO is rebuilt for same event. Then, we attempted sending mail by Travis CI but the problem in that was closed SMTP ports (they have a strict policy about that) then we thought that Travis CI can trigger the Sendgrid which can send email to the user with the help of API. We will use this code so that once the deployment of ISO by Travis CI is done it can execute the email script which requests Sendgrid to send email to the user. after_deploy: - ./mail.py   We can create code using code generation service of Sendgrid we are going to choose python as it is easier to manipulate strings in python and we are going to use email as an environment variable. After generation of python 3 code from the sendgrid website we are going to edit the message and email and hide the API key as an environment variable and create an authorization string to be used there too. The URL will be generated by the below script as the body of url remains same only two things will change the TRAVIS_TAG which is event name and date. date = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%Y%m%d') url="https://github.com/xeon-zolt/meilix/releases/download/"+os.environ["TRAVIS_TAG"]+"/meilix-zesty-"+date+"-i386.iso"   We can use this to hide the api key and use it as an environment variable because if the api key is visible in logs anyone can use it to exploit it and use it for spamming purpose. authorization = "Bearer " + os.environ["mail_api_key"] headers = { 'authorization': authorization,   The main thing left to edit in the script is the message which is in the payload and is a string type so we are going to use the email received by Meilix generator as an environment variable and concatenate it with the payload string the message sent is in the value which is in the HTML format and we add the generated URL in similar way we added email variable to string. payload = "{\"personalizations\":[{\"to\":[{\"email\":\"" + os.environ["email"] + "\"}],\"subject\":\"Your ISO is Ready\"}],\"from\":{\"email\":\"xeon.harsh@gmail.com\",\"name\":\"Meilix Generator\"},\"reply_to\":{\"email\":\"xeon.harsh@gmail.com\",\"name\":\"Meilix Generator\"},\"subject\":\"Your ISO is ready\",\"content\":[{\"type\":\"text/html\",\"value\":\"<html><p>Hi,<br>Your ISO is ready<br>URL : "+url+"<br><br>Thank You,<br>Meilix Generator Team</p></html>\"}]}"   The sent email looks like this References SendGrid Documentation

Continue ReadingHow Meilix Generator sends Email Notifications with SendGrid

Auto deployment of SUSI Skill CMS on gh pages

Susi Skill CMS is a web application framework to edit susi skills. It is currently in development stage, hosted on http://skills.susi.ai. It is built using ReactJS . In this blogpost we will see how to automatically deploy the repository on gh pages. Setting up the project Fork susi_skill_cms repository and clone it to your desktop, make sure you have node and npm versions greater than 6 and 3 respectively. Next go to cloned folder and install all the dependencies by running : :$ npm install Next run on http://localhost:3000 by running the command :$ npm run start To auto deploy changes on gh-pages branch, we need to setup Travis for the project. Register yourself on https://travis-ci.org/ and turn on the Travis for this repository. Next add .travis.yml in the root directory of the source folder.   sudo: required dist: trusty language: node_js node_js: - 6 before_install: - export CHROME_BIN=chromium-browser - export DISPLAY=:99.0 - sh -e /etc/init.d/xvfb start before_script: - npm run build script: - npm run test after_success: - bash ./deploy.sh cache: directories: node_modules # safelist branches: only: - master Source: https://github.com/fossasia/susi_skill_cms/blob/master/.travis.yml The travis configuration files will ensure that the project is building for every changes made, using npm run test command, in our case it will only consider changes made on master branch , if you want to watch other branches to add the respective branch name in travis configurations. After checking for build passing we need to automatically push the changes made for which we will use a bash script. #!/bin/bash SOURCE_BRANCH="master" TARGET_BRANCH="gh-pages" # Pull requests and commits to other branches shouldn't try to deploy. if [ "$TRAVIS_PULL_REQUEST" != "false" -o "$TRAVIS_BRANCH" != "$SOURCE_BRANCH" ]; then echo "Skipping deploy; The request or commit is not on master" exit 0 fi # Save some useful information REPO=`git config remote.origin.url` SSH_REPO=${REPO/https:\/\/github.com\//git@github.com:} SHA=`git rev-parse --verify HEAD` ENCRYPTED_KEY_VAR="encrypted_${ENCRYPTION_LABEL}_key" ENCRYPTED_IV_VAR="encrypted_${ENCRYPTION_LABEL}_iv" ENCRYPTED_KEY=${!ENCRYPTED_KEY_VAR} ENCRYPTED_IV=${!ENCRYPTED_IV_VAR} openssl aes-256-cbc -K $encrypted_2662bc12c918_key -iv $encrypted_2662bc12c918_iv -in deploy_key.enc -out ../deploy_key -d chmod 600 ../deploy_key eval `ssh-agent -s` ssh-add ../deploy_key # Cloning the repository to repo/ directory, # Creating gh-pages branch if it doesn't exists else moving to that branch git clone $REPO repo cd repo git checkout $TARGET_BRANCH || git checkout --orphan $TARGET_BRANCH cd .. # Setting up the username and email. git config user.name "Travis CI" git config user.email "$COMMIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL" # Cleaning up the old repo's gh-pages branch except CNAME file and 404.html find repo/* ! -name "CNAME" ! -name "404.html" -maxdepth 1 -exec rm -rf {} \; 2> /dev/null cd repo git add --all git commit -m "Travis CI Clean Deploy : ${SHA}" git checkout $SOURCE_BRANCH # Actual building and setup of current push or PR. npm install npm run build mv build ../build/ git checkout $TARGET_BRANCH rm -rf node_modules/ mv ../build/* . cp index.html 404.html # Staging the new build for commit; and then committing the latest build git add -A git commit --amend --no-edit --allow-empty # Deploying only if the build has changed if [ -z `git diff --name-only HEAD HEAD~1` ]; then echo "No Changes in…

Continue ReadingAuto deployment of SUSI Skill CMS on gh pages