autodeploy

Simple wrapper to make it easy to automatically deploy newer versions of your web apps

Installation

npm install --save autodeploy

What it Is

Autodeploy is a wrapper around node's core http module to make it easy to roll your own (for example) Git-based deployment.

Since many code-hosting sites offer hooks that they will make an HTTP request to when your code is changed, Autodeploy lets you set up a server on a different port that your code-hosting site can make requests to.

While automated deployment is great, there are some concerns that need to be addressed. For instance, there may be some times of day where you know that your app will be under high load. You wouldn't want to restart your server during those hours. Autodeploy provides a callback so you can decide if you want to restart your app. If the callback returns false, it will keep calling your callback at specified intervals, to make sure that the new code is eventually deployed.

Usage

require('autodeploy') returns a function that you call with options. That function then returns an instance of http.Server, which you can call listen on to start the server. While Autodeploy won't fall apart if you start multiple servers (as long as they are on different ports), this is not recommended.

Example:

// import autodeploy
var autodeploy = require('autodeploy');
 
// create the server
var server = autodeploy({
    // called to see if it's a good time to restart the server
    shouldRestart: function() {
        console.log('shouldRestart called');
        return Math.random() > 0.5;
    },
 
    // called when the app needs to restart
    restart: function() {
        console.log('restart called');
        // fetch new code
        // stop the app
        // install dependencies
        // start the app again
    },
 
    // specifies how often it should call shouldRestart if it returns false the first time
    interval: 5000,
 
    // path to listen on
    path: '/restart'
});
 
// start it!
server.listen(8000);
console.log('autodeploy listening at localhost:8000/restart');

Options

Options are passed in as an object, the only argument to Autodeploy's exported function.

shouldRestart

shouldRestart is called by Autodeploy the first time the request is made. It should return true if it's a good time to restart the app, false otherwise.

If it returns false the first time, Autodeploy will keep calling it at the interval specified.

Default: function() { return true; }

restart

restart is the function that Autodeploy calls to restart your app.

This option is required. Autodeploy will throw an error if it is not specified.

interval

The delay between subsequent calls to shouldRestart. This should be either a number of milliseconds or a string understandable by the ms module.

Default: 10000

path

The path that will restart your app.

Default: '/'

authorize

A function to authorize the request. This is meant to support systems like GitHub's Webhooks, where your app is given a secret that you specify as authorization. The function is passed the request object from node's http module as the only argument.

Default: function() { return true; }

License

Autodeploy is dual-licensed under the MIT and GPL 3.0 licenses. This means that you can use it in any package, no matter what license you are using.