Deploying to FTP/SSH with GitHub Actions

Because of an excellent article over at zellwk.com, it didn’t take me nearly as long to figure out how to deploy a static-generated site (Astro) to my hosting provider.

Requirements:

• SSH access to your server

Below is the deploy.yml file that I put in the .github/workflows folder. Works like a charm!

0. Overview

We need to generate four secrets in our repository settings for the deploy script to work:

• The private SSH key
• The SSH host
• The SSH username
• The directory where to publish our files

More detailed instructions in Zell’s blog above, below an abbreviated summary.

1. Generate a SSH key on your server

• Leave the passphrase empty; we cannot put that in GitHub Actions
• Give your generated key a proper name, like github-actions instead of the default id_rsa; much easier to identify later

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"

2. Add the public key to authorized_keys

On your server, add the newly generated key to authorized_keys:

cat github-actions.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

3. Add the private key to your repository secrets

• Create a new “Repository secret” under Settings, name it SSH_PRIVATE_KEY

4. Find the IP address of your server

• Find the IP address of your server
• Create another repository secret, SSH_HOST, and paste your IP address in the value field

5. Find the name of your SSH user account

• Create yet another repository secret, SSH_USER, and put your SSH username into the value field

6. Create a secret for your publish directory

Perhaps mostly to keep the deploy script clean and reusable…

• Create another repository secret PUB_DIR and paste the path to your publish directory, like:

/home/username/domain.com/public_html

7. Add the deploy script to your repository

• Create .github/workflows/deploy.yml and use the below script to automatically publish on push to branches main or master

This will grab the built dist directory, and copy the contents to your specified folder.

If your publish folder is named something else than dist, change the last line of the script where it says ./dist/ to whatever your publish directory is named.

name: deploy changes

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
      - main
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 0 * * *' # Everyday at 12am

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions: write-all
    strategy:
      matrix:
        node-version: [18]
    
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
          
      - name: Use pnpm
        uses: pnpm/action-setup@v2.2.4
        with:
          version: 7
          
      - name: Use Node.js ${{ matrix.node-version }}
        uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }}
          cache: pnpm
          
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: pnpm install
        
      - name: Build project
        run: pnpm run build

      - name: Install SSH Key
        uses: shimataro/ssh-key-action@v2
        with:
          key: ${{ secrets.SSH_PRIVATE_KEY }}
          known_hosts: unnecessary

      - name: Adding known_hosts
        run: ssh-keyscan -H ${{ secrets.SSH_HOST }}  >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts

      - name: Deploy with rsync
        run: rsync -avz ./dist/ ${{ secrets.SSH_USER }}@${{ secrets.SSH_HOST }}:${{ secrets.PUB_DIR }}