Travis and Taylors relationship: Are they really dating now in 2024?

Alright, let’s talk about my little adventure with Travis CI and Taylor Swift. Yeah, you heard right, Taylor Swift! It’s a bit of a weird mix, I know, but stick with me.

So, what was the goal? I wanted to set up a simple CI/CD pipeline using Travis CI to automatically deploy a little project to a staging server whenever I pushed code to my Git repository. And for a little fun, I decided to use Taylor Swift lyrics as test data. Why? Why not!

First things first: Setting up the Git repo. I kicked things off by creating a new Git repository on GitHub. Nothing fancy, just a basic repo for my project.

Next: The Travis CI Configuration File. This is where the magic happens. I created a file at the root of my repository. This file tells Travis CI what to do whenever a new commit is pushed to the repo. Here’s a simplified version of what my file looked like:

language: node_js
node_js:

- "16"
stages:
- test
- deploy
jobs:

include:
- stage: test
script: echo "Running tests... (with Taylor Swift lyrics!)" && node *
- stage: deploy
script: echo "Deploying to staging server..." && ./*

deploy:
provider: script
script: ./*
on:
branch: main

Okay, let’s break that down a bit:

• language: node_js tells Travis CI that this is a * project.
• node_js: - "16" specifies the * version to use.
• stages defines the different stages in my pipeline: “test” and “deploy”.
• The jobs section defines what happens in each stage. The test stage runs a simple command that echos a message along with running (which, surprise, uses Taylor Swift lyrics!). The deploy stage runs a script.
• The deploy section configures the deployment. provider: script means I’m using a custom script. on: branch: main ensures that the deployment only happens when code is pushed to the main branch.

The deployment script (*): This is where the actual deployment logic goes. For simplicity (and because this was just a demo), my script was super basic:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Deploying to staging..."
# Your actual deployment commands here!

# e.g., scp, rsync, etc.
echo "Deployment complete!"

In a real-world scenario, this script would contain the commands necessary to copy the files to my staging server, restart the application, and so on.

Taylor Swift Lyrics (*): Okay, this is the fun part. My file looked something like this:

const lyrics = [

"We are never ever ever getting back together",
"Long live the walls we crashed through",
"I knew you were trouble when you walked in"

*(lyric => {
*(`Testing: ${lyric}`);

// Your actual testing logic here!
*("Test passed!");

Obviously, this wasn’t doing any real testing. The point was just to show that you can use any kind of data you want in your tests. And, you know, add a little bit of Swiftie flair.

Connecting Travis CI to GitHub: I logged into Travis CI with my GitHub account and authorized it to access my repository. This allowed Travis CI to monitor my repo for changes.

Pushing the code and watching the magic happen: I committed my code (including the , , and files) and pushed it to my GitHub repository. Immediately, Travis CI detected the change and started the build process.

Monitoring the build: I went to the Travis CI dashboard to watch the build in real-time. I could see the different stages running, the output from the commands, and whether or not the build was successful.

Debugging: Of course, things didn’t work perfectly on the first try. I had a few typos in my file and some permissions issues with my script. But Travis CI provides detailed logs, so it was pretty easy to track down the problems and fix them.

Success! After a few tweaks, the build was finally successful. Travis CI ran my tests (with Taylor Swift lyrics!), executed the deployment script, and deployed my code to the staging server.

What I learned: This little project was a fun way to learn about CI/CD pipelines and how to use Travis CI. It showed me how easy it is to automate the process of testing and deploying code. Plus, I got to incorporate my love for Taylor Swift into my work (sort of!).

Things I could improve:

• Write more robust tests (instead of just printing lyrics!).
• Implement a proper deployment strategy (using tools like Ansible or Docker).
• Set up notifications to alert me when a build fails.

But overall, it was a successful experiment. And who knows, maybe I’ll use more Taylor Swift lyrics in my next project! Stay tuned.