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Call a CD pipeline from a CI pipeline

How to call child pipelines from a parent pipeline

In Codefresh you can easily create nested pipelines by calling other pipelines from within an existing pipeline. The codefresh-run plugin allows you to launch another pipeline, and optionally wait for its completion.

Parent and child pipelines

Parent and child pipelines

A very common pattern in Codefresh is to have a parent pipeline responsible for Continuous Integration (packaging code), that calls a child pipeline for Continuous Delivery (taking care of deployment).

Example project

You can see the example project at https://github.com/codefresh-contrib/call-child-pipeline-sample-app. The repository contains a NodeJs app as well as three - one parent and two child pipelines.

Create a pipeline that calls other pipelines

Here is the definition of the parent pipeline:

codefresh.yml

version: '1.0'
stages:
  - prepare
  - package
  - deploy
steps:
  main_clone:
    title: 'Cloning main repository...'
    type: git-clone
    repo: '${{CF_REPO_OWNER}}/${{CF_REPO_NAME}}'
    revision: '${{CF_REVISION}}'
    git: github
    stage: prepare
  read_my_app_version:
    title: Reading Application version
    stage: prepare
    image: node:latest
    commands:
      - export PACKAGE_VERSION=$(node -p "require('./package.json').version")
      - cf_export PACKAGE_VERSION
  build_my_docker_image:
    title: 'Building My Docker Image'
    stage: package
    type: build
    dockerfile: Dockerfile
    image_name: my-app-image
    tag: ${{PACKAGE_VERSION}}
  call_qa_pipeline:
    title: Deploy to QA
    stage: deploy
    type: codefresh-run:1.5.3
    arguments:
      PIPELINE_ID: child-pipelines/qa-pipeline
      VARIABLE:
        - CF_BRANCH=${{CF_BRANCH}}
        - CF_REVISION=${{CF_REVISION}}
        - APP_VERSION=${{PACKAGE_VERSION}}
    when:
      branch:
        only:
          - develop      
  call_prod_pipeline:
    title: Deploy to Prod
    stage: deploy
    type: codefresh-run:1.5.3
    arguments:
      PIPELINE_ID: child-pipelines/prod-pipeline
      VARIABLE:
        - CF_BRANCH=${{CF_BRANCH}}
        - CF_REVISION=${{CF_REVISION}}
        - APP_VERSION=${{PACKAGE_VERSION}}
    when:
      branch:
        only:
          - /^release.*/i

This pipeline does the following:

  1. Clones the source code through a Git clone step.
  2. Creates a variable that contains the Application version as specified in package.json through cf_export.
  3. Builds a docker image tagged with the Application version through a build step.
  4. Optionally runs the downstream QA pipeline if the branch is named develop. It also passes several environment variables to the child pipeline (including the Application version).
  5. Optionally runs the downstream Prod pipeline if the branch name starts with release. It also passes several environment variables to the child pipeline (including the Application version).

The last two steps use conditions to decide if they will run or not.

CI/CD pipeline examples
Codefresh YAML for pipeline definitions
Steps in pipelines
Creating pipelines
Pipeline plugins