Automated Staging and Production Deployment with GitHub Actions

As with any piece of software we recommend using separate staging and production environments for your Seaplane deployments. Having separate environments allows you to work on improvements without affecting end-customers. This tutorial shows you how to set up two different environments in Seaplane and automate the deployment to production with GitHub Actions.

info

Seaplane is working on a dedicated integration with GitHub. Let us know if you want early access by contacting support@seaplane.io

This tutorial assumes you have access to a Seaplane account -- you can sign up for an account here -- and are somewhat familar with GitHub and GitHub actions. For this tutorial you need two separate environments in your Seaplane account. Head over to the Flightdeck and create two new projects, name them staging and production respectively.

Project Directory Set Up

Create a new directory for your Seaplane project. This directory will hold your Seaplane project as well as the required GitHub action files.

mkdir my-project

Navigate into the new directory and initialize it as an empty GitHub repository.

cd my-project
git init

Create a new Seaplane project by running the following command.

seaplane init my-seaplane-project

Add the directory structure and file for your GitHub action.

mdkir -p .github/workflows && touch .github/workflows/deploy.yml

Our finished directory structure will look like this.

File Structure

└── my-project
   ├── .git
   │   └─ ...
   ├── .github
   │   └── workflows
   │       └── deploy.yml
   └── my-seaplane-project
       ├── .env
       ├── .gitignore
       ├── README.md
       ├── my-seaplane-project
       │   └── main.py
       └── pyproject.toml

Creating a Repository and Production Branch

Create a new repository on GitHub. You can learn more about creating repositories here. Connect your local Git repository to the remote repository by running the following command. Replace <YOUR REMOTE URL> with your GitHub repository URL usually in the form of git@github.com:org/repo-name.git

git remote add origin <YOUR REMOTE URL>

Navigate to your Github repository on github.com and create a new branch with the name production. You can learn more about creating branches here.

Setting Up The GitHub Action

Add the following code snippet to .github/workflows/deploy.yml. Make sure to update ./my-project on line 14 to the name of your root project directory, i.e, the name you gave to your project during the seaplane init step.

deploy.yml

name: Deploy to Seaplane

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - production

jobs:
  create-and-use-env:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    defaults:
        run:
          working-directory: ./my-project

    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
    
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
            python -m pip install --upgrade pip
            pip3 install poetry
            pip3 install seaplane
            poetry lock
            poetry install

      - name: Set .env Secrets
        run: |
           echo "SEAPLANE_API_KEY=${{ secrets.PRODUCTION_KEY }}" > .env

      - name: Deploy to Seaplane
        run: |
          # deploy to seaplane
          seaplane deploy

      - name: Delete .env File
        run: |
          # Remove the .env file
          rm -f .env

Github triggers this action on every push to the production branch. The action installs Poetry and all required packages. Next it constructs the .env file based on the repository secrets. Then it calls seaplane deploy to deploy the workload and finally it removes the .env file.

In this example, the app only requires a single secret, i.e, the Seaplane API key. You can add additonal secrets after line 30 by including the following line for each secret. Note the >> instead of >, this ensures we add additonal secrets instead of overwriting the existing file.

echo "<SECRET-NAME>=${{ secrets.<GH-SECRET-NAME> }}" >> .env

Make sure to replace <SECRET-NAME> with the secret name you use in your python code. Replace <GH-SECRET-NAME> with the name of your repository secret.

Lastly you need to add your production key (and any additional secrets) to the repository secrets. Head over to your GitHub repository on github.com. Click on settings → Secrets and variables → actions. Click on New repository secret. In the name field add PRODUCTION_KEY in the secret field add your Seaplane API key. Repeat this step for each additional secret if your application so requires.

Workflow

Now that you have your GitHub action set up, lets take a look at the suggested workflow. In this tutorial you worked with two environments staging and production. We recommend you work with the staging environment locally. That is you manually deploy the workloads with seaplane deploy and with your staging key configured in the .env file.

Manual deploy is much faster as it does not have to install all required packages every time, and is therefore better suited for debugging and development.

You can push the intermediate development work to the main branch (or any other branch except production for that matter).

Create a pull request merging your work from the main branch into production once you are ready to deploy to production. When merged the GitHub action automatically triggers a deployment to your seaplane production environment.

Advanced Use Cases

For the advanced user working with more than two environments you can configure the Github action to automatically deploy using different API keys, by adjusting line 28-30 as follows. You can extend the action with as many environments as you like by adding additonal elif cases.

Replace <BRANCH-NAME> and <KEY-NAME> with the respective branch and repository secret names.

      - name: Set .env Secrets
        run: |
          if [ "${GITHUB_REF##*/}" == "<BRANCH-NAME>" ]; then
            echo "SEAPLANE_API_KEY=${{ secrets.<KEY-NAME> }}" > .env
          elif [ "${GITHUB_REF##*/}" == "production" ]; then
            echo "SEAPLANE_API_KEY=${{ secrets.PRODUCTION }}" > .env
          fi
          cat .env