CI/CD for Full-Stack Applications

1. Introduction

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) are essential practices in modern web development. They automate the process of integrating code changes and deploying applications, ensuring faster delivery and higher quality.

2. Key Concepts

3. CI Process

The CI process involves several steps that help automate code integration:

1. Developers commit changes to the version control system.
2. A CI server detects the changes and triggers a build.
3. Automated tests are run to ensure code integrity.
4. Build artifacts are generated if tests pass.
5. Results are reported back to developers.

Code Example: Sample CI Configuration (GitHub Actions)

name: CI Pipeline

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      
      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '14'
      
      - name: Install Dependencies
        run: npm install
      
      - name: Run Tests
        run: npm test

4. CD Process

The CD process ensures that code changes are automatically deployed to production:

1. After CI completes successfully, the CD server picks up the build artifacts.
2. Deploy scripts are executed to push changes to the production environment.
3. Post-deployment tests are run to verify the deployment.
4. Monitoring tools check for application health.

Code Example: Sample CD Configuration (AWS CodePipeline)

# Sample AWS CodePipeline configuration

version: 1

phases:
  install:
    runtime-versions:
      nodejs: 14
    commands:
      - npm install
  pre_build:
    commands:
      - npm test
  build:
    commands:
      - echo Build completed on `date`
artifacts:
  files:
    - '**/*'

5. Best Practices

• Use feature branches for development.
• Automate testing as much as possible.
• Monitor production environments actively.
• Implement rollback strategies in case of deployment failures.
• Keep your CI/CD configurations in version control.

6. FAQ