CI/CD for Node.js
đź“š Learn more about Node.js action features, integrations and alternatives.
Buddy lets you create delivery pipelines that will build, test and deploy your Node.js application on a single push to a branch. The pipelines consist of actions that you can configure depending on your needs.
Example Node pipeline
Configuration is very easy and takes only a couple of minutes.
1. Select your Git repository
Buddy supports all popular Git hosting providers, including GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab. You can also use your own private Git server, or host code directly on Buddy.
Supported Git providers
2. Add a new delivery pipeline
Enter the pipeline's name, select the trigger mode, and define the branch from which Buddy will fetch your code:
Exemplary pipeline settings
Trigger modes
- Manually (on click) — recommended for Production
- On events (automatic) — recommended for Development
- On schedule (on time interval) — recommended for Staging/Testing
Event-based triggers allow you to run pipelines whenever a push is made to any branch in the repository, and whenever a branch, tag or a pull request is created or deleted.
On event pipeline trigger mode
On event pipeline trigger mode
3. Add actions
Buddy lets you choose from dozens of predefined actions. In this example, we'll add 4 actions that perform the following tasks:
- Build and test Node.js app: download dependencies (npm, yarn, etc.), run tests, compile assets (npm tasks, webpack, etc.)
- Upload code to server together with compiled assets
- Restart application
- Send notification to Slack
3.1 Build your Node.js application
Look up and click the Node.js action to configure it. Here you can choose the Node version and determine the commands to execute. The default commands are:
npm install npm test$$
Default build commands
If your tests require a database to run, you can attach it in the Services tab:
Services tab
Services tab
3.2 Deploy application to server
The compiled application needs to be uploaded to the server. Head to the Transfer section and select your upload action (SFTP in our case):
File transfer actions
When adding the action, you can choose what and where should be uploaded:
SFTP action configuration
Buddy's deployment is based on changesets. This means only changed files are deployed, which makes it lightning fast ⚡️.
3.2.1 Node modules
Make sure to add 
Ignore paths config
node_modules to the ignore paths (Transfer tab) - we will install them on the server after the deployment in the next step.
Ignore paths config
3.3 Install modules & restart application
Once the app is deployed, you can run additional commands on your server with the SSH action:
SSH action selection
In this case, we shall run npm install and restart the application with a script:
Restarting the application
3.4 (Optional) Send notification to Slack
You can configure Buddy to send your team a message after the deployment. In this example we'll use Slack:
Notification actions
If you add this action to the On failure section, Buddy will only send a message if something went wrong with your build or deployment.
On failure notification
On failure notification
4. Summary
Congratulations! You have just automated your entire delivery process 🍾🙌. Make a push to the selected branch and watch Buddy fetch, build, and deploy your project. With Continuous Delivery applied, you can now focus on what's really important: developing awesome apps! 🔥
Bear in mind that this article is only a brief example of what Buddy can do. You can create additional pipelines for staging and production environments, integrate with your favorite services (AWS, Google, Azure), trigger tests on pull requests, build Docker images, and push them to the registry—the possibilities are unlimited.
If you want us to create a delivery pipeline for your project, drop a line to support@buddy.works – we'll be happy to help!
Last modified on May 17, 2023