GitHub Actions templates for deploying code to preview Deployments on Astro

The Astronomer deploy action includes several sub-actions that can be used together to create a complete Deployment preview pipeline, a configuration that allows you to test your code changes in an ephemeral development Deployment before promoting your changes to a production Astro Deployment.

The Deployment preview templates use GitHub secrets to manage the credentials needed for GitHub to authenticate to Astro. You can specify the credentials for your secrets backend so that preview Deployments have access to secret Airflow variables or connections during tests. See Deployment preview template with secrets backend implementation.

Deployment preview templates use Astronomer's deploy-action to automates the deploy process, meaning it can selectively deploy parts of your project based on which files you changed. See Standard deploy templates for more information about the deploy-action.

Prerequisites

• An Astro project hosted in a GitHub repository.
• An Astro Deployment.
• A Deployment API token, Workspace API token, or Organization API token.
• Access to GitHub Actions.

Specific templates might have additional requirements.

warning

Creating preview Deployments for Deployments that use a private image registry is currently unsupported.

warning

If you use a self-hosted runner to execute jobs from GitHub Actions, the Astro CLI's config.yaml file, which stores default deploy details, might be shared across your organization and hence multiple CI/CD pipelines. To reduce the risk of accidentally deploying to the wrong Deployment, ensure the following:

• Add ASTRO_API_TOKEN to your repository and include a check in your GitHub workflow to verify that it exists.
• Use Deployment API tokens, which are scoped only to one Deployment, instead of Workspace or Organization API tokens.
• Specify deployment-id or deployment-name in your action. For example, astro deploy <deployment-id> or astro deploy -n <deployment-name>.
• Add the command astro logout at the end of your workflow to ensure that your authentication token is cleared from the config.yaml file.

Standard Deployment preview template

The standard Deployment preview template uses GitHub secrets and an Astro Deployment API token to create a preview Deployment whenever you create a new feature branch off of your main branch.

Setup

1. Copy and save the Deployment ID for your Astro deployment.
2. Set the following GitHub secret in the repository hosting your Astro project:

• Key: ASTRO_API_TOKEN
• Secret: <your-token>

3. In your project repository, create a new YAML file in .github/workflows named create-deployment-preview.yml that includes the following configuration.

   name: Astronomer CI - Create preview Deployment
   
   on:
     create:
       branches:
         - "**"
   
   env:
     ## Sets Deployment API key credentials as environment variables or GitHub Secret depending on your configuration
     ASTRO_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ASTRO_API_TOKEN }}
   
   jobs:
     deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
       - name: Create preview Deployment
         uses: astronomer/deploy-action@v0.4
         with:
           action: create-deployment-preview
           deployment-id: <main-deployment-id>

4. In the same folder, create a new YAML file named deploy-to-preview.yml that includes the following configuration:

   name: Astronomer CI - Deploy code to preview
   
   on:
     pull_request:
       branches:
         - main
   
   env:
     ## Set your API token as a GitHub secret
     ASTRO_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ASTRO_API_TOKEN }}
   
   jobs:
     deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
       - name: Deploy code to preview
         uses: astronomer/deploy-action@v0.4
         with:
           action: deploy-deployment-preview
           deployment-id: <main-deployment-id>

5. In the same folder, create a new YAML file named delete-preview-deployment.yml that includes the following configuration:

   name: Astronomer CI - Delete Preview Deployment
   
   on:
     delete:
       branches:
         - "**"
   env:
     ## Set your API token as a GitHub secret
     ASTRO_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ASTRO_API_TOKEN }}
   
   jobs:
     deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
       - name: Delete preview Deployment
         uses: astronomer/deploy-action@v0.4
         with:
           action: delete-deployment-preview
           deployment-id: <main-deployment-id>

6. In the same folder, create a new YAML file named deploy-to-main-deployment.yml that includes the following configuration:

   name: Astronomer CI - Deploy code to main Deployment
   
   on:
     push:
       branches:
         - main
   
   env:
     ## Set your API token as a GitHub secret
     ASTRO_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ASTRO_API_TOKEN }}
   
   jobs:
     deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
       - name: Deploy code to main Deployment
         uses: astronomer/deploy-action@v0.4
         with:
           deployment-id: <main-deployment-id>

   All four workflow files must have the same Deployment ID specified. The actions use this Deployment ID to create and delete preview Deployments based on your main Deployment.

Deployment preview template with secrets backend implementation

If you use a secrets backend to manage Airflow objects such as variables and connections, you can configure your action to grant preview Deployments access to your secrets backend. This means that DAGs in the preview Deployment can access your secret Airflow objects for testing purposes.

This template makes use of the AIRFLOW__SECRETS__BACKEND_KWARGS environment variable to store information and credentials for your secrets backend.

Prerequisites

• A secrets backend, such as Hashicorp Vault.

Setup

1. Copy and save the Deployment ID for your Astro deployment.

2. Set the following GitHub secrets in the repository hosting your Astro project. This includes your Astro API Token, so that GitHub has permissions to deploy code to your Deployments or Workspaces, and your secrets backend information stored in AIRFLOW__SECRETS__BACKEND_KWARGS. See Configure a secrets backend for more information about configuring your secrets backend as an environment variable.

   • Key 1: ASTRO_API_TOKEN
   • Secret 1: <your-token>
   • Key 2: AIRFLOW__SECRETS__BACKEND_KWARGS
   • Secret 2: <your-kwargs>

3. In your project repository, create a new YAML file in .github/workflows named create-deployment-preview.yml that includes the following configuration.

   name: Astronomer CI - Create preview Deployment with Secrets Backend
   
   on:
     create:
       branches:
         - "**"
   
   env:
     ## Sets Deployment API key credentials as environment variables
     ASTRO_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ASTRO_API_TOKEN }}
   
   jobs:
     deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
       - steps:
         - name: Create Deployment Preview
           uses: astronomer/deploy-action@v0.3
           with:
             action: create-deployment-preview
             deployment-name: "test"
             id: create-dep-prev
         - name: Create Secret Variables
           run: |
             astro deployment variable update --deployment-id ${{steps.create-dep-prev.outputs.preview-id}} AIRFLOW__SECRETS__BACKEND_KWARGS=${{ secrets.AIRFLOW__SECRETS__BACKEND_KWARGS }} --secret

4. In the same folder, create a new YAML file named deploy-to-preview.yml that includes the following configuration:

   name: Astronomer CI - Deploy code to preview
   
   on:
     pull_request:
       branches:
         - main
   
   env:
     ## Set your API token as a GitHub secret
     ASTRO_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ASTRO_API_TOKEN }}
   
   jobs:
     deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
       - name: Deploy code to preview
         uses: astronomer/deploy-action@v0.4
         with:
           action: deploy-deployment-preview
           deployment-id: <main-deployment-id>

5. In the same folder, create a new YAML file named delete-preview-deployment.yml that includes the following configuration:

   name: Astronomer CI - Delete Preview Deployment
   
   on:
     delete:
       branches:
         - "**"
   env:
     ## Set your API token as a GitHub secret
     ASTRO_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ASTRO_API_TOKEN }}
   
   jobs:
     deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
       - name: Delete preview Deployment
         uses: astronomer/deploy-action@v0.4
         with:
           action: delete-deployment-preview
           deployment-id: <main-deployment-id>

6. In the same folder, create a new YAML file named deploy-to-main-deployment.yml that includes the following configuration:

   name: Astronomer CI - Deploy code to main Deployment
   
   on:
     push:
       branches:
         - main
   
   env:
     ## Set your API token as a GitHub secret
     ASTRO_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ASTRO_API_TOKEN }}
   
   jobs:
     deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
       - name: Deploy code to main Deployment
         uses: astronomer/deploy-action@v0.4
         with:
           deployment-id: <main-deployment-id>

   All four workflow files must have the same Deployment ID specified. The actions use this Deployment ID to create and delete preview Deployments based on your main Deployment.