Implementing CI/CD Pipeline with GitHub Actions

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment

Automated pipelines accelerate the process of testing, building, and deploying code changes. Using GitHub Actions, teams can create workflows that automatically run tests, build applications, and deploy to production environments whenever code is pushed to the repository.

Lets say we have a React application. To run our application, we run the commands:

  npm install
  npm test
  npm run build
  npm run dev

These scripts build our code and serve the content to a location available to us. Here's the equivalent yaml configuration:

  name: Deploy NPM

  on:
    ...

  jobs:
    build-and-test:
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest

      steps:
        ...

        - name: Set up Node.js
          uses: actions/setup-node@v4
          with:
            node-version: 22

        - name: Install dependencies
          run: npm install

        - name: Run tests
          run: npm test

        - name: Build project
          run: npm run build

The result is a ubuntu image which has our application downloaded and built.

Ubuntu is most common, but you may use whichever platform is best for your application. For example: checkout my automated CI/CD for full iOS delivery.

Next step is running the image to create our container. This will vary depending on your target. Create your repository secrets and environment. Then deploy with:

AWS

 - name: Deploy to S3
      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4
      with:
        aws-access-key-id: \${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
        aws-secret-access-key: \${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
        aws-region: us-east-1

    - name: Sync build folder
      run: aws s3 sync dist/ s3://your-bucket-name --delete

Azure

   - name: Deploy to Azure
      uses: azure/webapps-deploy@v3
      with:
        app-name: \${{ env.AZURE_WEBAPP_NAME }}
        publish-profile: \${{ secrets.AZURE_WEBAPP_PUBLISH_PROFILE }}

Docker

    - name: Build Docker image
      run: docker build -t myapp .

    - name: Push to Docker Hub
      run: |
        echo "\${{ secrets.DOCKER_PASSWORD }}" | docker login -u "\${{ secrets.DOCKER_USERNAME }}" --password-stdin
        docker tag myapp username/myapp:latest
        docker push username/myapp:latest

Some platfroms like Vercel & Railway have built-in CI/CD.

Important: Keep your secrets secured. Reference secret keys only through repository secrets.