GitHub Actions x AWS CodePipeline

This GitHub Actions will help you trigger a pipeline in your AWS CodePipeline - assumming 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.

Code in Main

First, you'll need to have a reasonably modern version of node handy. This won't work with versions older than 9, for instance.

Install the dependencies

$ npm install

Build the typescript and package it for distribution

$ npm run build && npm run package

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 here.

{
    "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 here 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. AWS regions list is available here.

jobs:
  deploy:
    steps:
      - name: Trigger AWS CodePipeline
        uses: zulhfreelancer/[email protected]
        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"

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: zulhfreelancer/[email protected]
        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"

TODO

Add tests if deemed reasonable