Pages Build Container

Docker image for building and publishing static sites as part of the cloud.gov Pages platform.

Generally, site builds work in three stages: clone, build, and publish. Each stage is broken down into a number of steps. First, the container checks out the site from GitHub. Then it builds the site with the specified build engine. Then it gzip compresses text files and sets cache control headers. Finally, it uploads the built site to S3, and also creates redirect objects for directories, such as /path => /path/.

Usage

Command

python main.py [options]

Command options

One of the following flags must be specified:

Flag	Example	Description
-p, --params	-p '{"foo": "bar"}'	A JSON encoded string containing the build arguments
-f, --file	--file ./.local/my-build.json	A path to a JSON file containing the build arguments

Using cloud.gov tasks

cf run-task <APP_NAME> "cd app && python main.py [options]"

Using docker-compose

docker-compose run --rm app python main.py [options]

Full examples

# build arguments provided as a JSON encoded string

cf run-task pages-build-container "python main.py -p '{\"foo\": \"bar\"}'" --name "build-123"

# build arguments provided in a JSON encoded file

docker-compose run --rm app python main.py -f /tmp/local/my-build.json

Environment variables

Name	Optional?	VCAP Service	Description
CACHE_CONTROL	Y		Default value to set for the Cache-Control header of all published files, default is max-age=60
DATABASE_URL	N		The URL of the database for database logging
USER_ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE_KEY	N	federalist-{space}-uev-key	Encryption key to decrypt user environment variables
MAX_WORKERS	N		Maximum number of workers/threads to use when uploading files to S3

When running locally, environment variables are configured in docker-compose.yml under the app service.

Build arguments

Name	Optional?	Default	Description
aws_access_key_id	N		AWS access key for the destination S3 bucket
aws_secret_access_key	N		AWS secret key for the destination S3 bucket
aws_default_region	N		AWS region for the destination S3 bucket
bucket	N		AWS S3 bucket name for the destination S3 bucket
github_token	Y	None	GitHub auth token for cloning the repository
status_callback	N		The URL the container should use to report the status of the completed build (ie, success or failure)
config	Y	None	A yaml block of configuration to add to _config.yml before building. Currently only used in jekyll site builds
generator	N		The engine to use to build the site ('jekyll', 'hugo', 'node.js', or 'static')
owner	N		The GitHub organization of the source repository
repository	N		The name of source the repository
branch	N		The branch of the source repository to build
site_prefix	N		The S3 bucket "path" that the site files will be published to. It should not have a trailing or prefix slash (Ex. preview/<OWNER>/<REPOSITORY>/<BRANCH>)
baseurl	Y	None	The base URL that will be used by the build engine to determine the absolute path for site assets (blank for custom domains, the site_prefix with a preceding / for preview domains
user_environment_variables	Y		Array of objects containing the name and encrypted values of user-provided environment variables (Ex. [{ name: "MY ENV VAR", ciphertext: "ABC123" }])

Environment variables provided during builds

The following environment variables are available during site builds and when running the federalist npm script. They may be useful for customizing the display of certain information in the published site, for example, to display the current published branch name.

• OWNER
• REPOSITORY
• BRANCH
• SITE_PREFIX
• BASEURL

Development

Getting started

Requirements

• Docker and Docker Compose
• AWS S3 bucket name and associated credentials (key, secret, region)
• A Github repository with a Pages-compatible site
• A Github Personal Access Token if building a private repository, see creating a new personal token for your GitHub account for more information.

Clone the repository

  git clone git@github.com:cloud-gov/pages-build-container.git
  cd pages-build-container

Create build arguments

  mkdir -p .local
  cp .local.sample.json .local/my-build.json

Update build arguments

Update the appropriate fields to contain the desired values for your build, see build arguments for options. The .local folder should not be checked into version control (it is in .gitignore) and will be mounted into the Docker container at /tmp/local.

Initialize the database

This only needs to be once. To force a reinitialization of the database, remove the tmp/db folder in the project root and run the below command again.

  docker-compose run --rm db

Then kill the process when it is done.

Run the build

  docker-compose build
  docker-compose run --rm app python main.py -f /tmp/local/my-build.json

If the database is not ready when running a build (despite the healthcheck), just try running the build again.

Interact with the build environment

  docker-compose run --rm app bash
  python main.py -f /tmp/local/my-build.json

Inspecting the database

1. Ensure the database is running (in the background)

docker-compose up -d --no-deps db

2. Run psql in the container

docker-compose exec db psql -U postgres -d pages

Inspecting logs

During or after builds the echoserver and database logs can be viewed with:

  # all logs
  docker-compose logs

  # only the echo server
  docker-compose logs echoserver

  # only the db
  docker-compose logs db

Testing

1. Build the test image

docker-compose build test

2. Run any testing steps

# unit tests
docker-compose run --rm test pytest

# unit tests with code coverage
docker-compose run --rm test pytest --cov-report xml:./coverage/coverage.xml --cov-report html:./coverage --cov-report term --cov=src

# lint
docker-compose run --rm test flake8

# static analysis
docker-compose run --rm test bandit -r src

Continuous Integration

We use Concourse CI for our CI/CD system. To use Concourse, one must have appropriate permissions in UAA as administered by the cloud.gov operators. Access to Concourse also requires using the GSA VPN.

1. To get started install and authenticate with the fly CLI:

• brew install --cask fly
• fly -t <Concourse Target Name> login -n pages -c <concourse url>

2. Update local credential files (see ci/vars/example.yml)

CI deployments

This repository contains two distinct deployment pipelines in concourse:

• build-container
• build-container dev

build-container creates the site build container image, pushes it to ECR, and then deploys the image for the build container app.

↓ NOTICE ↓

build-container dev deploys the Pages app/api, the admin app, and the queues app when a PR is created into the staging branch. This uses a unique pipeline file: ./ci/pipeline-dev.yml

Deployment

Pipeline instance variables

Three instances of the pipeline are set for the pages dev, pages staging and pages production environments. Instance variables are used to fill in Concourse pipeline parameter variables bearing the same name as the instance variable. See more on Concourse vars. Each instance of the pipeline has three instance variables associated to it: deploy-env, git-branch.

Instance Variable	Pages Dev	Pages Staging	Pages Production
deploy-env	dev	staging	production
git-branch	staging	staging	main

Public domain

This project is in the worldwide public domain. As stated in CONTRIBUTING:

This project is in the public domain within the United States, and copyright and related rights in the work worldwide are waived through the CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication.

All contributions to this project will be released under the CC0 dedication. By submitting a pull request, you are agreeing to comply with this waiver of copyright interest.