GitHub Actions x AWS CodePipeline

This GitHub Actions will help you trigger a pipeline in your AWS CodePipeline - assuming you already have the pipeline. This will not create the pipeline for you.

This is mainly copied from project GitHub Actions x AWS CodePipeline by Zulhilmi Zainudin and I thank him for his work on it.

One of the issues I found with this action was that if something went wrong when triggering the pipeline it would print the error but it would mark the action as failed. That is what I have tried to address with my changes to his code with everything else being the same.

Initial Setup

After you've cloned the repository to your local machine or codespace, you'll need to perform some initial setup steps before you can develop your action.

Note

You'll need to have a reasonably modern version of Node.js handy (20.x or later should work!). If you are using a version manager like nodenv or fnm, this template has a .node-version file at the root of the repository that can be used to automatically switch to the correct version when you cd into the repository. Additionally, this .node-version file is used by GitHub Actions in any actions/setup-node actions.

1. 🛠️ Install the dependencies

   npm install

2. 🏗️ Package the TypeScript for distribution

   npm run bundle

3. ✅ Run the tests

   $ npm test
   
   PASS  ./index.test.js
     ✓ throws invalid number (3ms)
     ✓ wait 500 ms (504ms)
     ✓ test runs (95ms)
   
   ...

Create a release

Checkout a new branch with name release-<major>.<minor>.<patch>.

Update the package.json with the new version number.

Run:

npm install

Commit the changes with the message Release <major>.<minor>.<patch>

Push to GitHub and open a Pull Request.

Once the PR has been merged, GitHub Actions will create a new release tag.

Setup

AWS IAM

Create an IAM user with codepipeline:StartPipelineExecution permission. You may take and customize the IAM policy below as starter point. Note that I'm using "*" in the policy. For better security, you can limit the policy to only execute specific pipelines. You can read more about IAM for CodePipeline.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["codepipeline:StartPipelineExecution"],
      "Resource": ["*"]
    }
  ]
}

GitHub Secrets

After you create the IAM user with the right permission, add two variables below in your GitHub repository secrets area:

• AWS_PIPELINE_ACCESS_KEY: the Access Key ID for the user that you just created
• AWS_PIPELINE_SECRET_KEY: the Secret Key for the user that you just created

Usage

Basic Usage

Note:

• Please check the latest available version and replace it with X.X.X in the code examples below.

• Identify in which AWS region your pipeline is located. Use that region name for aws-region key below. You can use the AWS regions list to find this.

jobs:
  deploy:
    steps:
      - name: Trigger AWS CodePipeline
        uses: Crown-Commercial-Service/aws-codepipeline-action@vX.X.X
        with:
          aws-region: 'ap-southeast-1'
          aws-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_PIPELINE_ACCESS_KEY }}
          aws-secret-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_PIPELINE_SECRET_KEY }}
          pipeline-name: 'your-pipeline-name'
          target-branch: 'target-branch' # optional

Advance Usage

Below is the example for situation where:

• You only want to trigger the pipeline if previous job was successful
• You only want to trigger the pipeline if the Git branch that GitHub Actions currently running is a specific branch

jobs:
  job1: ... code for job1 ...
  deploy:
    needs: job1
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Trigger AWS CodePipeline
        uses: Crown-Commercial-Service/ccs-aws-codepipeline-action@vX.X.X
        if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/your-branch-name'
        with:
          aws-region: 'ap-southeast-1'
          aws-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_PIPELINE_ACCESS_KEY }}
          aws-secret-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_PIPELINE_SECRET_KEY }}
          pipeline-name: 'your-pipeline-name'