Simply Web Deploy

Automatically deploy your projects to Simply.com or any other place that supports Web Deploy using this GitHub action.

This action utilizes Microsoft’s own Web Deploy 3.0+ executable, which you can read everything about here. Further documentation of the rules and parameters can also be seen here.

Basic example

Place the following in /.github/workflows/main.yml

name: Build project and deploy to FTP server
on: [push]

jobs:
  build_and_deploy:
    name: Build package and deploy to FTP server
    runs-on: windows-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Deploy to Simply
        uses: rasmusbuchholdt/[email protected]
        with:
          website-name: ${{ secrets.WEBSITE_NAME }}
          server-computer-name: ${{ secrets.SERVER_COMPUTER_NAME }}
          server-username: ${{ secrets.SERVER_USERNAME }}
          server-password: ${{ secrets.SERVER_PASSWORD }}
          source-path: '\build\'
          target-path: '/my-sub-directory/'

Setup

1. Locate the repository you want to automate web deployment in.
2. Select the Actions tab.
3. Select Set up a workflow yourself.
4. Copy paste one of the examples into your .yml workflow file and commit the file.
5. All the examples takes advantage of Secrets, so make sure you have added the required secrets to your repository. Instructions on this can be found in the settings section.
6. Once you have added your secrets, your new workflow should be running on every push to the branch (this can vary depending on if you use workflow_dispatch or on push ).

Settings

These settings can be either be added directly to your .yml config file or referenced from your GitHub repository Secrets. I strongly recommend storing any private values like server-username and server-password in Secrets, regardless of if the repository is private or not.

To add a secret to your repository go to the Settings tab, followed by Secrets. Here you can add your secrets and reference to them in your .yml file.

Setting	Required	Example	Default Value	Description
website-name	Yes	sub.example.com		Deployment destination server
server-computer-name	Yes	https://nt8.unoeuro.com:8172		Computer name, including the port (Find yours here if you are using Simply.com)
server-username	Yes	username		Your FTP username
server-password	Yes	password		Your FTP password
source-path	No	\my-build\dist\	\publish\	The path to the source directory that will be deployed (relative to project root)
target-path	No	/sub-directory/	'' (Root of your website)	The path where the source directory will be deployed (relative to website root)
target-delete	No	true	false	Delete files on the target computer that do not exist on the source computer
skip-directory-paths	No	\App_Data,logs,temp	''	Comma-separated list of directories to skip during deployment
skip-files	No	web.config,appsettings.json	''	Comma-separated list of specific files to skip during deployment
skip-patterns	No	.*\.log$,.*\.bak$	''	Comma-separated list of regex patterns to skip during deployment

Common examples

Build and publish .NET Core API

name: Build, publish and deploy project to FTP server

on: [push]

jobs:
  build_and_deploy:
    runs-on: windows-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Setup .NET Core
        uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v4
        with:
          dotnet-version: "8.0.x"
          cache: true
          cache-dependency-path: "**/packages.lock.json"

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: dotnet restore

      - name: Build
        run: dotnet build --configuration Release --no-restore

      - name: Publish
        run: >
          dotnet publish [YOUR_PROJECT_NAME]/[YOUR_PROJECT_NAME].csproj
          --configuration Release
          --framework net8.0
          --output ./publish
          --runtime win-x86
          --self-contained true
          -p:PublishTrimmed=false
          -p:PublishSingleFile=false

      - name: Test with .NET
        run: dotnet test

      - name: Deploy to FTP server
        uses: rasmusbuchholdt/[email protected]
        with:
          website-name: ${{ secrets.WEBSITE_NAME }}
          server-computer-name: ${{ secrets.SERVER_COMPUTER_NAME }}
          server-username: ${{ secrets.SERVER_USERNAME }}
          server-password: ${{ secrets.SERVER_PASSWORD }}

Build and publish Angular application

name: Build, publish and deploy project to FTP server

on: [push]

jobs:
  build_and_deploy:
    runs-on: windows-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Build application
      - run: npm ci && ng build --configuration production --output-path=dist

      - name: Deploy to Simply
        uses: rasmusbuchholdt/[email protected]
        with:
          website-name: ${{ secrets.WEBSITE_NAME }}
          server-computer-name: ${{ secrets.SERVER_COMPUTER_NAME }}
          server-username: ${{ secrets.SERVER_USERNAME }}
          server-password: ${{ secrets.SERVER_PASSWORD }}
          source-path: '\dist\'
          # Angular generates random file names on build so we want to delete target
          target-delete: true

Build and publish React application

name: Build, publish and deploy project to FTP server

on: [push]

jobs:
  build_and_deploy:
    runs-on: windows-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Cache node modules
        id: cache-node-modules
        uses: actions/cache@v4
        with:
          path: node_modules
          key: cache-node-modules-${{ hashFiles('package-lock.json') }}

      - name: Setup Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        if: steps.cache-node-modules.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
        with:
          node-version: 20

      - name: npm install
        if: steps.cache-node-modules.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
        run: npm install

      - name: Build Project
        run: |
          $env:PUBLIC_URL = "${{ env.PUBLIC_URL }}"
          npm run build
        shell: pwsh

      - name: Deploy to FTP server
        uses: RasmusBuchholdt/[email protected]
        with:
          website-name: ${{ secrets.WEBSITE_NAME }}
          server-computer-name: ${{ secrets.SERVER_COMPUTER_NAME }}
          server-username: ${{ secrets.SERVER_USERNAME }}
          server-password: ${{ secrets.SERVER_PASSWORD }}
          source-path: '\build\'
          target-delete: true