How to deploy Angular Apps to GitHub Pages (gh-pages) - Setup CI/CD for Angular App with GitHub Action

5 minute read

Do you want to build your first Angular App and deploy over cloud using GitHub Actions? How to deploy/publish Angular App to GitHub Pages automatically? Did you use GitHub Actions to build and deploy Angular App over GitHub Pages? Stay tuned in this article I will show you step by step from creating angular app to building and deploying using GitHub Actions.

What are we building

We will build an angular application & deploy over GitHub Pages.

Creating an Angular Application

Run Below script to create new angular app.

ng new sample-app

Install Npm package

ng add angular-cli-ghpages

What are the steps on Build

✔️ Build
✔️ Lint
✔️ Test

Creating GitHub Actions

Let’s create GitHub workflow with jobs. Note that now a days GitHub actions runner sets the CI=true by default. Learn more here…

Name of Workflow

name: Angular GitHub CI # 👈

Trigger on Main Branch

Let’s trigger the job whenever main branch got new push.

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main # 👈

Node Versions

Let’s run on multiple node versions on ubuntu-latest.

jobs:
  ci:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    strategy:
      matrix:
        node-version: [10.x, 12.x]
        # 👆

Note we are using node10 and node12/ Therefore, at a time there will be parallelly 2 jobs will run one for 10.x and one for 12.x

Checkout source code

Let’s checkout the code first.

steps:
  - uses:
      actions/checkout@v2
      # 👆

Setup Node Environment

- name: Use Node.js $
- uses: actions/setup-node@v1
  with:
    node-version:
      $
      # 👆

Use GitHub Cache

Let’s use GitHub Cache to save node_modules. Learn more about Caching GitHub Workflow dependencies here.

Install Dependencies

Next we must install node packages conditionally. Learn more here…

- name: Install Dependencies
  if:
    steps.cache-nodemodules.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
    # 👆 if cache hits the skip this step.
  run: npm ci

Building Project

Let’s run build in production mode to compile our project. We need to pass -- --prod so that ng build --prod will be executed.

- name: Build
  run: npm run build -- --prod

Linting Project

Let’s run linting.

- name: Lint
  run: npm run lint

Testing Project

Let’s run test in production mode. We need to make sure while running Test:

✔️ we are using chrome headless browser "browsers": "ChromeHeadless" and
✔️ Generating code coverage "codeCoverage": true,
✔️ Ignoring Source Map "sourceMap": false
👁️ Make sure not in watch mode ` “watch”: false`

All of the above settings can be done in angular.json file.

Navigate to angular.json file identify project name.

Go to test object. projects.sample-app.architect.test
Add below code configuration for production.

"configurations": {
  "production": {
    "sourceMap": false,
    "codeCoverage": true,
    "browsers": "ChromeHeadless",
    "watch": false
  }
},

It will look like this:

       "test": {
          "builder": "@angular-devkit/build-angular:karma",
          "configurations": { 👈
            "production": {
              "sourceMap": false,
              "codeCoverage": true,
              "browsers": "ChromeHeadless",
              "watch": false
            }
          },👈
          "options": {
            "main": "src/test.ts",
            "polyfills": "src/polyfills.ts",
            "tsConfig": "tsconfig.spec.json",
            "karmaConfig": "karma.conf.js",
            "assets": [
              "src/favicon.ico",
              "src/assets"
            ],
            "styles": [
              "src/styles.scss"
            ],
            "scripts": []
          }
        },

Lets add below script in the main.yml file. Which will use above production test configuration while running in build machine.

- name: Test
  run: npm run test -- --prod

Triggering GitHub Workflow

Now is the time to see our workflow in action. Go ahead and push the changes to GitHub and check your actions tab on github.

Notice both jobs are completed:

Complete YAML file

Deploying Angular App to GitHub Pages

Next once you know your project is passing all these below steps under CI job.

✔️ Build
✔️ Lint
✔️ Test

Next we must deploy the app to somewhere. In this example I will deploy our app to GitHub Pages.

GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages are free where you can host your static site. I am going explain you the steps to deploy your angular app there.

Using Ng Deploy

ng deploy is the Angular CLI command that automates the deployment of Angular App to GitHub Pages. When you run ng deploy, it executes a builder that performs the deployment for you.

Install angular-cli-ghpages builder by Running script ng add angular-cli-ghpages on command line from root of your project.

Deploying to GitHub Pages From Local machine

In GitHub Page server we must give base-href to our repository name so that It can host our static files successfully. Since our GitHub repository name is angular-ci-cd-with-github-actions my deploy script would be: ng deploy --base-href=/angular-ci-cd-with-github-actions/

Add below script on package.json

    "deploy": "ng deploy --base-href=/angular-ci-cd-with-github-actions/"

You can even run the deploy command from local machine to test npm run deploy

Your App is Live on GitHubPage

Go to the settings of your GitHub Repository and notice the Site is published. Wait for 2-5 mins and then browse your app.

Notice our site is up and running on GitHub Pages

Update GitHub Actions to Deploy Angular App

Next let’s update the workflow to deploy our app over GitHub Pages. Below 2 steps we will run whenever previous steps are passing. Note that that if: success() is always implied unless you specify if: always() or if: failure() . Therefore, I am not adding if condition in my steps.

Creating Change Log

Add secret called as TOKEN_GITHUB_ACTION to your repository.

Next we will use Conventional ChangeLog Action to create our change log.

- name: Conventional Changelog Action
  id: changelog
  uses: TriPSs/conventional-changelog-action@v3
  with:
    github-token: $
    output-file: 'false'

Creating GitHub Release

Next we will use Conventional ChangeLog Action to tag our repo and create GitHub Release. Note: If you have no changes then this will not create a release.

Deploy to GitHub Pages

Finally let’s deploy the app to GitHub Pages.

- name: Deploy
  run: |
    npm run deploy

Complete YAML for deploying angular app to GitHub-Pages

Here is my final workflow:

Now if you push the changes workflow will trigger and CI/CD will succeed 🆒!

All done 🎉 enjoy your angular ci/cd all free! Here is my demo site live

Thanks for reading my article till end. I hope you learned something special today. If you enjoyed this article then please share to your friends and if you have suggestions or thoughts to share with me then please write in the comment box.

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