Use Github Action to deploy Vue app to Netlify

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  • Generate a personal access token and create ACCESS_TOKEN variable under Settings -> Secrets.
  • Keep the personal access token in a safe place and do not lose it
  • Go to Actions tab of the github repo
  • Create netlify.yml under .github/workflow
  • Paste the follow code in the yaml file
# .github/workflows/netlify.yml
name: Build and Deploy to Netlify
on:
  push:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize]
jobs:
  build:
    name: Deploying to Netlify
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Setup Node.js for use with actions
        uses: actions/setup-node@v1.1.0
        with:
           version:  12.x

      - name: Check out branch
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      # ( Build to ./dist or other directory... )
      - name: Clean install dependencies
        run: npm ci

      - name: Build app
        run: npm run build-netlify

      - name: Deploy to Netlify
        uses: nwtgck/actions-netlify@v1.1
        with:
          publish-dir: './dist'
          production-branch: master
          github-token: ${{ secrets.ACCESS_SECRET }}
          deploy-message: "Deploy from GitHub Actions"
          enable-pull-request-comment: false
          enable-commit-comment: true
          overwrites-pull-request-comment: true
        env:
          NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN }}
          NETLIFY_SITE_ID: ${{ secrets.NETLIFY_SITE_ID }}
        timeout-minutes: 1

I deploy the Tic Tac Toe game to both github page and Netlify; therefore, I use NODE_ENV variable to configure the public path in vue.config.js.

// vue.config.js
module.exports = {
  publicPath: process.env.NODE_ENV === "production" ? "/vue-tic-tac-toe/" : "/",
  outputDir: "dist",
  lintOnSave: process.env.NODE_ENV !== "production",
  devServer: {
    overlay: {
      warnings: true,
      errors: true
    }
  }
};

The NODE_ENV variable of github page is “production” by default and the full URL becomes https://<username>.github.io/vue-tic-tac-toe/. For Netlify deployment, I set the NODE_ENV variable to “netlify” and the game is hosted on https://<netlify app>/ .

Open package.json and add a task that builds the project to dist directory and publishes it to Netlify. 

{
  ...
  "scripts": {
    ...
    "build-netlify": "NODE_ENV=netlify vue-cli-service build"
  },
  ...
}

Login to Netlify to look up NETIFY_SITE_ID and NETIFY_AUTH_TOKEN.

Go to Team > Site > Settings > Site Information > API ID to copy down the NETLIFY_SITE_ID

Go to User Settings > Applications > Personal access token and clicks New Access Token button to generate a token. The token is your NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN and it should be kept in a safe location.

Now, you are ready to create NETLIFY_SITE_ID and NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN variables under Settings -> Secrets in Github.

We are done! There is no need to write custom deployment script and travis configuration file to automate the CI/CD process. Github notifies Netlify to automate the build process and publish the site when latest changes are committed.

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