Hubot Scripts - Deploy

A script for Hubot which can trigger Continuos Integration tasks, for deploy or test purposes.

What I mean?

Problem

You have a Jenkins pipeline in place for your deployment system, in other words you
deploy your application by triggering a Jenkins job in its interface.

You use Slack as your communication tool in your team, maybe have the Jenkins integration configured,
so you can see a Jenkins job status inside a Slack channel.

Cool. What if you would never have to leave Slack to start & monitor a deploy?
You can do that :).

(I know you know you can do everything, I just want to make our lives easier by writing the code.)

Jenkins & Slack use case

Scenario: Deploy the application food-ordering on the development environment from Slack
Given I have an application named *food-ordering*
And I have 3 Jenkins jobs to deploy the application, one for each environment: dev, staging and production
And The Jenkins job name for deploying the app on dev is *DeployFoodOrderingDev*
When I write in Slack: *@hubot deploy food-ordering on dev*
Then the *DeployFoodOrderingDev* job will start.

Benefits of solving the problem

Using a Hubot command in Slack to test, deploy, build or whatever you want to do, has the following benefits:

• it will give your team the opportunity to have events logs in one place: inside a Slack channel.
• you will know if someone is deploying the app or if a test suite has failed,
• you will be able to parametrized your deploy job with a given git branch, without having to click twice in Jenkins,
• you won't have to browse trough dozens of jobs on your Jenkins instance, or to remember which job does what.

Solution ingredients

You need:

1. A Jenkins/Bamboo (CI tool) job to deploy your application
2. A communication tool, let's say Slack
3. A Hubot instance (the funny bot from GitHub)
4. Nice to have: Jenkins integrated with Slack

Yes, you can create a Slack command to trigger a Jenkins job, but I think it's easier to
customize and manage your tasks with these scripts.

If you're reading this then you should already have 1, 2 at least, and maybe 4.
If you don't, you should start with those: A CI tool, a communication channel and connect them.

To move forward create a Hubot instance, if you don't already have one.

How

1. Installation

- Add to your Hubot repository, in `package.json` the `hubot-scripts-deploy` package or via `npm install hubot-scripts-deploy --save`
- Enable the script by adding `"hubot-scripts-deploy"` to your  `external-scripts.json` file, in your Hubot project.

1. Configuration

- Configure the job in Jenkins to be triggered from a script, use [Build Token Root Plugin](https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Build+Token+Root+Plugin) for this.  
- In order to map the appropriate command with its CI job, we have to define a JSON for each script we want to use.  
  Create a JSON file, in a directory wherever on your Hubot server's local storage, or even in the git project of your Hubot instance, with the following format:

 
{
  "<nameOfYourProject>": {
    "<environment1>": "<theJenkinsJobName>",
    "<environment2>": "<theJenkinsJobName>"
  }
}
 

 For a better understanding & examples, please check [data_example](data_example/) files. The [data_example/jenkins_deploy.json](data_example/jenkins_deploy.json) file  
 describes a mapping between CI jobs and Hubot deploy commands, which are coded in the [jenkins/deploy.coffee](src/scripts/jenkins/deploy.coffee) script.  

 !*Disclaimer*: The codebase and data are split for the each command type / script, to enable a better scope separation.

- Create a `config.coffee` file like [config.coffee.example](config.coffee.example) and add the needed settings:
  - *JENKINS_URL* - the URL of your Jenkins master instance, with port and user & password (if set). Keep in mind that the URL must be accessible from the server on which you run your Hubot instance.
  - *HUBOT_DEPLOY_TOKEN* - Jenkins Token for triggering the build remote, it might not be set
  - *HUBOT_DEPLOY_DATA_FILE_PATH* - the absolute path to the JSON file created for the mapping of the commands.

1. Use

Now you can go in any Slack channel where Hubot is a member of, or even in a direct message with him, and type commands like:

@hubot (ci|cd) help

to see extra help

@hubot (ci|cd) view rules

to see the content of HUBOT_DEPLOY_DATA_FILE_PATH

@hubot (ci|cd) <nameOfYourProject> on <environment1>

to start the job specified, in your the JSON file, at the environment1 key of the nameOfYourProject entry.

or

@hubot ci <nameOfYourProject2> on <environment1> with branch=staging region=us-east-1

to start the job parametrized with the staging as the git branch and region.

! You should configure beforehand your job to accept the parameter at build.

Thank you

I hope you find these scripts useful. If you have a success story, update or a complaint,
please create an issue and let me know. :)