This document discusses how GitHub integrations and webhooks can be used to automate workflows. It provides examples of how Loma Linda University leveraged webhooks to automate their code deployment process for a web portal. A webhook was configured so that whenever code was pushed to the repository, it would trigger an automated process to deploy the code to production servers. This minimized potential downtime and allowed code to be deployed within seconds. The document also provides an overview of GitHub integrations and webhooks, and how they can be used to connect GitHub with other systems and services.

1. Get Hooked on Integrations With GitHub
Christopher Thomas
HighEdWeb 2016
10/17/2016

2. #DPA2

3. Intro
» What is Git?
» What is Github?
» GitHub Integrations
» GitHub Webhooks
» Webhook usage at Loma Linda University
» Summary
» Resources
» Questions

4. About Me: Christopher Thomas
» Responsible for tools and technologies used to develop web apps at Loma
Linda University
» For many years, active in the web community through contributions
» SoCal born and raised!
» Marathon runner

5. About Loma Linda University (LLU)
» Location: 1 hour from Los Angeles
» Students: 4,500+
» Programs: 100+
» Schools: 8
» Ownership: Privately owned by the Seventh-Day-Adventist Church
» Mission: “To continue the teaching and healing ministry of Jesus Christ”
» Other facts:
~ Institution mainly focused on health sciences at the graduate level
~ City of Loma Linda is the only Blue Zone in the country
~ No mascot, but “Good Samaritan” statue is an unofficial proxy
~ Institution is a part of a 6 hospital 1,000+ bed health system

6. What is Git?
» Source code version control
» Developed by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux
» Distributed
» Full history of commits are in each copy of the repository
» Users can make commits without being connected to the network
» Can work without a main/central repository

7. What is GitHub?
» A git server / git repository hosting site
» Has arguably the best web based UI of all git server solutions
» Easily allows users to share code and to collaborate
» Largest git repository hosting site
» Comes in two versions
~ Cloud based (github.com)
~ On premise, VM appliance (GitHub Enterprise)

8. What are Integrations and Webhooks?
» Events in GitHub are broadcasted
» Integrations are predefined event broadcasts to a specific vendor solution
» Webhooks are user setup HTTP requests

9. Types of Events
» Fork
» Branch
» Issues (opened, closed, comments, assigned)
» Push
» Team (add, edit memberships, delete, etc..)
» Merge

10. Integrations
» GitHub has over 70 predefined integrations
» Lots of popular apps and services are on the list
» Very little configuration needed to set up
» Not all events are broadcasted for each integration
» GitHub.com calls them integrations, GitHub Enterprise calls them services

11. Integrations
» Project Management
~ JIRA
» Continuous Integration
~ TravisCI
~ Jenkins / Hudson (plugin needed)
» Communication
~ #Slack
~ HipChat
» Other

12. Your Integration / Vendor Service Not
on List?
» Options:
~ Integrations Early Access Program
~ Webhooks

13. Integrations Early Access Program
» Used to be able to submit a Pull Request to submit an integration
» Process recently changed to the integrations early access program
» More formal process
» Inclusion requirements more clearly stated than in the past

14. Webhooks

15. Webhooks
» Best when the integration you need can’t be handled by something in the
integrations directory or eligible for the integrations early access program;
when you need a custom integration
» GitHub sends a HTTP POST request to a specified URL
» POST body contains data about the event in either JSON or form data
format
» Can set up via settings webpage or via GitHub’s API
» Can trigger webhook for all events or certain type of events

17. Case study
Webhooks usage at Loma Linda University

18. Administrative Systems Department
» Consists of roughly two dozen people with a mixture of programmer /
business / application analysts and managers.
» “We write the programs that run the University”
» Develop mostly for the web using PHP for an in-house developed platform
» Everyone in department has ability to push code to production

19. MyLLU Portal
» Web portal that serves the entire enterprise
» Dozens of apps
» 100,000s of lines of PHP code
» Two instances of portal (internal vs external apps)
» Types of apps:
~ Admissions committee tools
~ Collaboration tools
~ Finance tools
~ Identity management tools
~ Job board
~ Student forms workflow processing
~ Training requirements tracker

20. Developer Workflow
» Initial steps:
~ Developer forks main repository
~ Clones repo in their account
~ Adds main repository as a remote (upstream)
» Development steps:
~ Create feature branch and push to origin, if working with others
~ Make code changes
~ Test on local VM
~ Commit Changes
~ Merge Changes back to master
~ Push master to upstream

21. MyLLU Deployment Process
» Before Git / GitHub
~ Developers would FTP files to production servers
~ Sometimes process would take minuets if code was in separate
directories
~ Potential app downtime while code is copied to servers
» After Git / GitHub
~ Webhook used to initiate code deployment
~ Code copied to servers in seconds
~ Minimized potential app downtime while code is copied

22. MyLLU Deployment Process
» Developer pushes code (upstream) to repository in our GitHub Enterprise
instance
» GitHub triggers the webhook, which contacts the intermediate server
» Intermediate server pulls changes from GitHub to a local repo
» Intermediate pushes code from local repo to production web servers
» Intermediate server sends notice to all developers with commits in the push
that their changes have been published

23. MyLLU Deployment Process

24. Intermediate Server
» Had to do for network policy reasons (not necessary in most enviroments)
» Dedicated account used to process GitHub webhook
» Must create SSH key pair so server can pull code from GitHub Enterprise
and push code to production servers
» Add newly created public key to GitHub as a deploy key

25. Deploy Key

26. Production Servers
» Process based on Evanto Tuts+ article “Setting Up A Staging Environment”
» Have a separate account just for the webhook process
» SSH keys so intermediate server can connect
» Two git repos
~ Bare repo in git process home repo
~ Regular repo in the webroot

27. Summary
» GitHub was built to integrate with other systems
» Many predefined integrations for lots of vendor systems
» Can ask for new intergration to be added through a formal process
» Custom integrations can be done through webhooks
» Loma Linda has leveraged webhooks to deploy code to its portal platform

28. Resources
» GitHub Integrations Directory
~ https://github.com/integrations
» GitHub Early Access Integrations
~ https://developer.github.com/early-access/integrations/
» Setting Up a Staging Environment
~ https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/setting-up-a-staging-environment--net-29738
» Webhooks API Docs
~ https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/hooks/

29. Questions

30. #DPA2