trigger-circleci-pipeline

A little utility for triggering CircleCI pipelines for a given branch with fallback to the default branch

Install and use

$ npm i -D trigger-circleci-pipeline
# or use Yarn
$ yarn add -D trigger-circleci-pipeline

Set the CircleCI personal access token as an environment variable CIRCLE_CI_API_TOKEN

Using one-time install

You can avoid adding this NPM package as a dev dependency and simply invoke it using npx

$ npx trigger-circleci-pipeline --org ... --project ...

If the workflow is successfully triggered, it will print the workflow build number and any other information returned by the CircleCI API. It will also print workflow URLs

CircleCI pipeline number 125
{
  number: 125,
  state: 'pending',
  id: '4b9b35c7-d292-4af4-a993-81006e006474',
  created_at: '2021-09-02T14:40:42.447Z'
}
trigger pipeline on branch delay-ajax successfully
1 workflow(s) for pipeline 4b9b35c7-d292-4af4-a993-81006e006474
e2e https://app.circleci.com/pipelines/gh/bahmutov/todomvc-tests-circleci/125/workflows/b3877d79-6efc-4f5a-837a-faa4f31daff2

Defaults

Trigger the pipeline with all defaults for CircleCI organization and project:

npx trigger-circleci-pipeline --org <org name> --project <project name>
# for example
npx trigger-circleci-pipeline --org bahmutov --project todomvc-tests-circleci

Branch name

If you want to trigger the pipeline on a specific branch (with fallback to the default one)

npx trigger-circleci-pipeline --org <org name> --project <project name> --branch <branch name>
# for example
npx trigger-circleci-pipeline \
  --org bahmutov --project todomvc-tests-circleci --branch feature-x

Pipeline parameters

You can pass pipeline parameters using a comma-separated string in --parameters

npx trigger-circleci-pipeline \
  --org <org name> --project <project name> --branch <branch name> \
  --parameters x=value,y=another-value
# for example
npx trigger-circleci-pipeline \
  --org bahmutov --project todomvc-tests-circleci --branch feature-x \
  --parameters TEST_BRANCH=feature-x,TEST_URL=https://test.com/feature-x

Numbers and booleans are automatically converted, for example

--parameters NAME=Joe,AGE=21,INTERN=false
# will be sent as
{ NAME: "Joe", AGE: 21, INTERN:false }

Debugging

Run this utility with the environment variable DEBUG=trigger-circleci-pipeline to see verbose log messages.

Dry run

You can use the --dry parameter to avoid actually triggering the pipeline, and just print the parsed parameters.

GitHub Actions

When running this utility on GitHub Actions, if there is a single CircleCI workflow URL, then this code sets the output variable CircleCIWorkflowUrl. You can use it in the later steps:

- name: Trigger the CircleCI run
  run: npx trigger-circleci-pipeline ...
  id: trigger
- name: Use the workflow URL
  run: echo "URL is ${{ steps.trigger.output.CircleCIWorkflowUrl }}"

When running from Github Actions the single CircleCI workflow URL is added to the job's summary

Demo

Run the demo.sh to trigger a workflow build in the project bahmutov/todomvc-tests-circleci with results at CircleCI. Using as-a is recommended.

$ as-a circleci-user ./demo.sh

Example projects

• bahmutov/todomvc-no-tests-vercel
• test-todomvc-using-app-actions and read How To Tag And Run End-to-End Tests

NPM module API

triggerPipeline

const { triggerPipeline } = require('trigger-circleci-pipeline')
triggerPipeline({
  org: 'org name',
  project: 'project name',
  branchName: 'branch name', // optional
  parameters, // object with pipeline parameters
  circleApiToken,
})

triggerPipelineWithFallback

First tries to call with the branch, if that does not work, tries no branch name.

const { triggerPipelineWithFallback } = require('trigger-circleci-pipeline')
triggerPipelineWithFallback({
  org: 'org name',
  project: 'project name',
  branchName: 'branch name', // optional
  parameters, // object with pipeline parameters
  circleApiToken,
})

printWorkflows

Once you have a pipeline ID, you can print its workflows

const { printWorkflows } = require('trigger-circleci-pipeline')
printWorkflows(id)
// prints the number of workflows, their statuses and URLs

It expects the CircleCI API token as env variable CIRCLE_CI_API_TOKEN or you can pass it as the second argument

printWorkflows(id, circleCiAPIToken)

More information

See CirlceCI pipeline API. Read the blog post How to Keep Cypress Tests in Another Repo While Using CircleCI.

Small print

Author: Gleb Bahmutov © 2021

• @bahmutov
• glebbahmutov.com
• blog
• videos

License: MIT - do anything with the code, but don't blame me if it does not work.

Spread the word: tweet, star on github, etc.

Support: if you find any problems with this module, email / tweet / open issue on Github

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2021 Gleb Bahmutov

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.