Artifacts

Artifacts persist data after the step is completed and may be used as a storage for deployment packages.

Microtica supports three types of artifacts:

• File Artifacts
• JSON Artifacts
• Docker Artifacts

#File Artifacts

File artifacts are the most common type of artifacts used to produce a deployable package that consists of plain files organized in a folder structure.

YAML

steps:
  step_name:
    ...
    artifacts:
      files:
        [artifact-name]: [path-to-folder-or-files]

Below is an example of a pipeline step that installs node modules and compiles the source code. Once the commands are executed, a new dst/ folder will be created that contains the compiled code with the modules, and we want to package only that folder.

microtica.yaml

steps:
  BuildNodeApp:
    image: node:latest
    commands:
      - npm install
      - npm run build
    artifacts:
      files:
        primary: dst/

In this case, we’ve defined one artifact named as primary (the name is just a way to recognize multiple artifacts). The artifact will contain all the files and folders inside the local dst/ path.

To define an artifact that contains only one specific file just provide the path to the file:

microtica.yaml

steps:
  BuildNodeApp:
    image: node:latest
    commands:
      - npm install
      - npm run build
    artifacts:
      files:
        primary: dst/index.js

You can also select multiple files by using standard Unix filename wildcard syntax:

microtica.yaml

steps:
  BuildNodeApp:
    image: node:latest
    commands:
      - npm install
      - npm run build
    artifacts:
      files:
        primary: dst/*.js

The above example will produce an artifact containing all files with .js extension within dst folder.

To define secondary artifacts, just specify them under files.

artifacts:
  files:
    primary: /dst
    assets_artifact: /assets

#JSON Artifacts

Microtica allows you to define structured artifacts in JSON format that you can easily reference from other steps.

Basically, you define the path to the JSON file saved locally during the step execution. Then, the JSON object will become available to reference from other steps using a common JS syntax.

YAML

artifacts:
  json: [path-to-json-file]

To demonstrate this, we can define a pipeline that first provisions a complete infrastructure in the cloud to host our SPA website and then deploy the source code on S3.

microtica.yaml

steps:
  DeployInfra:
    title: Provision SPA infrastructure on AWS
    image: hashicorp/terraform:latest
    commands:
      - terraform init
      - terraform apply -auto-approve
      - terraform output -json > terraform.output
    artifacts:
      json: terraform.output
  DeployWebsite:
    title: Deploy SPA website
    image: aws/codebuild/standard:4.0
    commands:
      - echo Website is being deployed...
      # Reference json artifacts from DeployInfra step
      - aws s3 sync . ${DeployInfra.artifactsBucket}
      - aws cloudfront create-invalidation --distribution-id ${DeployInfra.cdnId}

In the DeployInfra step, Terraform will generate a terraform.output file. This is a JSON file containing the outputs of the provisioned infrastructure.

The DeployWebsite step then references the outputs from the previous step by simply using ${DeployInfra.artifactsBucket} syntax. artifactsBucket is a property from terraform.output file.

#Docker Artifacts

Microtica provides built-in support to build/push Docker images on your preferred Docker registry.

To start working with Docker artifacts you would first need to connect your Docker registry from Microtica Portal.

The name provided when connecting a new registry will be used in the pipeline yaml to specify the artifacts destination.

Docker artifacts are generated using the built-in Docker Push step by specifying the image name, tag and the Docker registry to be used.

microtica.yaml

steps:
  BuildAndPushDocker:
    type: docker-push
    image_name: microtica/my-app
    tag: v0.1.0
    dockerfile: Dockerfile
    # optional, if not specified, default will be used
    registry: my-registry

After BuildAndPushDocker step is completed, image with name my_app_image and tag v0.1.0 will be pushed to my_dockerhub_registry Docker registry connected within Microtica.