FTP deploy then send Slack notification

This action uses git-ftp/git-ftp to sync the repository with a FTP location. During the task, it uses Slack's Incoming WebHooks to send progress notifications.

This is a part of GitHub Actions library created by Object.NET.

Inputs

Command	Description
repo-root	Repository's root folder to deploy. Default: ".".
ftp-host	Required The hostname of the FTP server which files should be deployed to. No default value.
ftp-user	Required The name of the person to greet. Default "World". No default value.
ftp-pass	Required The password to authenticate the FTP user with. No default value. Note: Remember to store this as a repository secret!
ftp-root	Required The remote FTP folder to deploy files to. No default value.
slack-webhook	Required The Slack's Incoming WebHook hash to use to send messages. No default value. The format accepted is TXXXXX/BXXXXX/XXXXXXXXXX, or the full URL.
slack-to	The Slack's recipient to the message (a channel name or ID, or an user ID). Default: empty (will use whatever is set up in Slack).
slack-nick	The Slack's nickname to assign to the sender. Default: empty (will use whatever is set up in Slack).
slack-icon	The Slack's emoji to use as sender's portrait. Default: empty (will use whatever is set up in Slack).

Note: You can use Slack's own emoji picker to check which ones are supported and what's the corresponding string expansion. Custom emoji can be used as well. Unofficial list of supported emoji in Slack from WebFX.

Outputs

None. This action just returns success or failure depending whether the slack messages and FTP synchronization goes well.

Slack messages failing after the FTP sync succeeds won't trigger a failure to the action. But if the first slack message (announcing the action's start) fails, then the whole process will fail.

Example action descriptor YAML file

The file should be placed in the repository within the .github/workflows folder, and may be named as anything ending with the yml extension.

website_publish.yml:

name: website_publish

on:
  push:
    branches: [ master ]
jobs:
  publish:
    name: Publishes the website, sending Slack notifications in the meanwhile.
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2.1.0
      with:
        fetch-depth: 0

    - name: Website deploy
      uses: objectdotnet/action-ftp-deploy-then-slack-notification@0.3.0
      with:
        repo-root: .
        ftp-host: ${{ secrets.ftp_deploy_host }}
        ftp-user: ${{ secrets.ftp_deploy_user }}
        ftp-pass: ${{ secrets.ftp_deploy_pass }}
        ftp-root: ${{ secrets.ftp_deploy_root }}
        slack-webhook:  ${{ secrets.slack_webhook }}

The non-required "with" options (as example) are:

        slack-to: ${{ secrets.slack_recipient }}
        slack-nick: "Deploy Service"
        slack-icon: ":construction_worker:"

Note on secrecy

You can use repository secret words to keep sensitive data from being publicly displayed in your repository. FTP Hostname, root directories, username and password, as well as the slack's WebHook; being the latter two the most important ones to be concealed using this technique.

Secrets disclosure warning: if any exception or git-ftp command imprints sensitive data, it may be sent through the Slack notification message. Especially if git-ftp fails due to an incorrect parameter, the slack notice will include the command's output that may potentially disclose sensitive information. To avoid this, arguments passed to the git-ftp command (which includes the password) are suppressed from the Slack notification, but we can't guarantee git-ftp error output will consistently suppress passwords display.

Action building

We have chosen to bundle everything into a minified index.js file instead of committing the whole 22MB of the node_modules/ folder.

For this, we are using the suggested alternative from github guide, the Creating a JavaScript action, that is to use the @zeit/ncc NPM package. Instead of installing it system-wide, we included it in the project's package.json file and call it directly off its installation in node_modules.

In summary, the process to build the resulting index.js file consists of:

npm install # necessary first time, to install NPM packages
tsc         # compile the files through typescript
node node_modules/@zeit/ncc/dist/ncc/cli build deploy.js --out . --minify --no-cache --quiet --external "@zeit/ncc"

Further reading

All about GitHub Actions is documented at GitHub Actions Documentation Page