Streamline Your App Development with Automated Testing and Deployment
Are you tired of waiting for preview builds and tests to run before merging a pull request to your production branch? In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to automate that process using GitHub Actions. We’ll build a sample Vue.js app, write some tests, and then push to our remote repository. We’ll trigger an action to run our tests and any other checks, then merge to the production branch automatically when all checks pass. Finally, we’ll deploy our app to Netlify.
What Are GitHub Actions?
GitHub Actions are instructions you create in your repository to automate certain processes in your project. They enable you to build, test, and deploy your code directly from GitHub. With GitHub Actions, you can automate workflows based on specified events, such as push, new release, issue creation, and more.
What Is Netlify?
Netlify is a static deployment platform for automating modern web projects. It offers features like continuous deployment, serverless form handling, AWS Lambda support, and more. With Netlify, you can ship your web applications in three quick steps: connect your repository, configure your build settings, and deploy your site.
Building a Vue.js App
First, we’ll scaffold our app using the Vue CLI. We won’t focus too much on how Vue.js works or how to test Vue apps. For a deeper dive, check out our tutorial on testing Vue components with Vue Testing Library.
Setting Up Unit Tests in Vue.js
We’ll use the Vue CLI to set up unit tests for our app. We’ll create a new project, select the unit tests option, and install the necessary packages. Then, we’ll write tests for our App component using Jest.
Deploying to Netlify with GitHub Actions
Next, we’ll deploy our app to Netlify using GitHub Actions. We’ll create a new site on Netlify, connect our repository, and configure our build settings. We’ll also disable automatic builds on Netlify and set up secret keys to deploy our site outside of Netlify.
Prepping for Deployment with GitHub Actions
We’ll use GitHub Actions to run our tests and deploy our app to Netlify. We’ll create two workflows: one to run on pull requests to the master branch and build, test, and merge the code to master, and another to run on commits to the master branch to build, test, and deploy our app.
How to Use GitHub Actions
We’ll create a file named autodeploy.yml in our project’s root folder and add a job to build, test, and deploy our app. We’ll also create a file named automerge.yml to automatically merge pull requests.
Pushing Your Repository to GitHub
Finally, we’ll push our local repository to GitHub, create new labels on GitHub, and test our automerge workflow.
By following this tutorial, you’ll learn how to automate testing and deployment for your Vue.js app using GitHub Actions and Netlify. Say goodbye to manual testing and deployment, and hello to faster and more efficient development!