Github Actions With An Organizational Context

Learn all the skills you need to confidently utilize GitHub Actions in a personal and organizational capacity

What you'll learn

Learn fundamental, intermediate, and advanced concepts for using GitHub Actions

Understand the value and functionality of GitHub Actions as a CI tool

Understand the value and versatility of GitHub Actions within an organisation

Learn how GitHub Actions can safely and securely interact with other tools in your organisation infrastructure

Learn when and how to create Standalone Workflows, Reusable Workflows, and Custom Actions

Add GitHub Actions as a skillset to your resume

Requirements

No previous experience with GitHub or GitHub Actions is required, although some working knowledge of GitHub commands (such as creating branches and Pull Requests) will be useful. But any required commands will be demonstrated in the course

No software engineering / programming skills are required. Any application files used in the course are supplied

A GitHub Account will be required to follow exercises in this course.

A Docker account (or equivalent container management account) will be required to complete some exercises in this course

Description

You want to learn about GitHub Actions. Great idea! GitHub Actions is an excellent CI tool with a suite of strengths and powerful capabilities that can enhance any CI/CD pipeline.But learning about GitHub Actions on a personal account level is not enough. Surely, to be truly effective with this tool, it is better to understand how it fits into an organization or workplace, what capabilities it brings, how best to implement it, maintain it, secure it, and improve it over time.That is where this course comes in. This is not just a course that will teach you how to use GitHub Actions from scratch in a personal capacity. You will also learn how to apply GitHub Actions at organization level. The subtle but important differences between GitHub Actions at a personal level, and GitHub Actions at scale, are covered here with careful detail, to ensure you know exactly how this tool works within an organization.Through this course you:learn the fundamental building blocks of any GitHub Actions workflowLearn many methods to manage and enhance your workflowsLearn how to create dynamic workflows that make use of real-time values generated at runtimeSecure your workflows by guarding sensitive values and storing them safely for useLink GitHub Actions to other service providers and incorporate their tools into your workflowMake use of Reusable Workflows to minimize your code while maximizing your work outputCreate custom Actions that can do exactly what you want them to do, and how this can be highly beneficial in a confidential workspace contextSee GitHub Actions in action within a CI/CD pipelineAnd more!That means that, by the end of this course, you will confidently be able to manage GitHub Actions workflows for yourself and also for any workplace, and also ensure they are using this fantastic tool in the best possible way.

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction

Lecture 2 Git, GitHub and GitHub Actions

Lecture 3 Important Links

Lecture 4 GitHub Actions in the GitHub User Interface

Lecture 5 Let's Build Something!

Lecture 6 How to approach this course

Section 2: GitHub Actions - The Building Blocks

Lecture 7 Introduction to this section

Lecture 8 Understanding the 'on' parameter / the event trigger

Lecture 9 Exercise: The 'on' trigger Part 1: Push and Pull Request

Lecture 10 Exercise: The 'on' trigger Part 2: Workflow Dispatch and Schedule

Lecture 11 Understanding Jobs

Lecture 12 Exercise - Jobs

Lecture 13 Understanding Steps

Lecture 14 Introducing Actions

Lecture 15 Exercise - Steps part 1

Lecture 16 Exercise - Steps part 2

Lecture 17 Assignment time!

Lecture 18 Solution for assignment

Lecture 19 Section 2 wrap-up

Section 3: Secrets, Environment variables, Inputs, Outputs

Lecture 20 Introduction

Lecture 21 Adding an ID to our Steps

Lecture 22 Understanding Secrets

Lecture 23 Exercise - Secrets

Lecture 24 Understanding Environment Variables

Lecture 25 Exercise - GitHub Environment Variables

Lecture 26 Exercise - Custom Environment Variables

Lecture 27 Understanding Inputs

Lecture 28 Exercise - Inputs

Lecture 29 Understanding Outputs

Lecture 30 Exercise - Outputs

Lecture 31 Assignment time!

Lecture 32 Solution for Assignment

Lecture 33 Section 3 wrap-up

Section 4: Diving Deeper

Lecture 34 Introduction

Lecture 35 Introduce real tests

Lecture 36 Understanding the Matrix (not the movie)

Lecture 37 Exercise - Matrix

Lecture 38 Understanding If Statements

Lecture 39 Exercise - If Statements

Lecture 40 Understanding Artifacts and Caching

Lecture 41 Exercise - Artifacts

Lecture 42 Exercise - Caching

Lecture 43 Exercise - Bringing it all together

Lecture 44 Assignment time!

Lecture 45 Section 4 wrap-up

Section 5: GitHub Actions and Docker

Lecture 46 Introduction

Lecture 47 Understanding Containers and Container Management Tools

Lecture 48 Setting Up a Docker Account

Lecture 49 Exercise - Build a Docker Image

Lecture 50 Exercise - Push Docker Image

Lecture 51 Exercise - Pull Docker Image

Lecture 52 Section 5 - wrap-up

Section 6: GitHub Actions - Odds and Ends

Lecture 53 Introduction

Lecture 54 Understanding Concurrency

Lecture 55 Exercise - Concurrency

Lecture 56 Understanding Continue-on-error

Lecture 57 Exercise - Continue-on-error

Lecture 58 Understanding Timeout-minutes

Lecture 59 Exercise - Timeout-minutes

Lecture 60 Understanding the GitHub Step Summary

Lecture 61 Exercise - The GitHub Step Summary

Lecture 62 Understanding the GitHub Token and Permissions

Lecture 63 Exercise - The GitHub Token and Permissions

Lecture 64 Understanding Repository Dispatch

Lecture 65 Exercise - Repository Dispatch

Section 7: GitHub Actions Reusable Workflows

Lecture 66 Introduction

Lecture 67 Understanding Reusable Workflows

Lecture 68 Repository Configuration Options

Lecture 69 Structure and Parameters of a Reusable Workflow

Lecture 70 Exercise - Reusable Workflows in the Same Repository

Lecture 71 Creating a Centralized Reusable Workflows Repository

Lecture 72 Exercise - Reusable Workflows Using a Centralized Repository

Lecture 73 Exercise - Concurrency and Outputs in Reusable Workflows

Lecture 74 Repository Versioning and Why You Should Be Using it

Lecture 75 Exercise - Versioning

Lecture 76 Assignment time!

Lecture 77 Solution - Reusable Workflows

Lecture 78 Solution - Caller Workflows

Lecture 79 Section 7 - wrap-up

Section 8: Creating Custom Actions

Lecture 80 Introduction

Lecture 81 Why Custom Actions?

Lecture 82 The Different Types of Actions

Lecture 83 How we will Approach Building Our Custom Actions In This Section

Lecture 84 Creating a Composite Action

Lecture 85 Calling a Composite Action

Lecture 86 Creating a Javascript Action

Lecture 87 Calling a Javascript Action

Lecture 88 Creating a Docker Action

Lecture 89 Calling a Docker Action

Lecture 90 Section 8 wrap-up

Section 9: GitHub Actions and ArgoCD - A CI/CD Pipeline

Lecture 91 Introduction

Lecture 92 Setting the Scene

Lecture 93 Setting Up

Lecture 94 Creating a GitHub Token and connecting to ArgoCD

Lecture 95 Adjusting Reusable Workflows for this Section

Lecture 96 Adding Application Files and Adjusting Deployment Files

Lecture 97 Create Pull Request Workflow

Lecture 98 Dockerfile Changes

Lecture 99 Release Workflow Part 1

Lecture 100 Release Workflow Part 2

Lecture 101 Release Workflow Part 3

Lecture 102 Merge Pull Request, Run Release Workflow and Sync ArgoCD

Lecture 103 Conclusions and Final Thoughts

Section 10: Bonus Lecture

Lecture 104 Bonus Lecture

Engineers seeking to understand GitHub Actions, it's role in personal and organisational contexts, and who want to add GitHub Actions as a skillset to their resume,Devops and Software Engineers who wish to expand the skill set