--- author: Alexandre S Hostert author_gitlab: Hostert level: beginner article_type: tutorial type: tutorial date: 2018-02-20 last_updated: 2019-03-06 --- # Testing a Phoenix application with GitLab CI/CD [Phoenix](https://www.phoenixframework.org/) is a web development framework written in [Elixir](https://elixir-lang.org), which is a functional language designed for productivity and maintainability that runs on the [Erlang VM](https://www.erlang.org). Erlang VM is really really fast and can handle very large numbers of simultaneous users. That's why we're hearing so much about Phoenix today. In this tutorial, we'll teach you how to set up [GitLab CI/CD](../../README.md) to build and test a Phoenix application. The tutorial assumes that you know how to create a Phoenix app, run tests locally, and how to work with Git and the GitLab UI. ## Introduction ### What is Phoenix? [Phoenix](https://www.phoenixframework.org/) is a web development framework written in [Elixir](https://elixir-lang.org). It's useful for building fast, reliable, and high-performance applications, as it uses [Erlang VM](https://www.erlang.org). Many components and concepts are similar to Ruby on Rails or Python's Django. High developer productivity and high application performance are only a few advantages on learning how to use it. Working on the MVC pattern, it's was designed to be modular and flexible. Easy to maintain a growing app is a plus. Phoenix can run in any OS where Erlang is supported: - Ubuntu - CentOS - Mac OS X - Debian - Windows - Fedora - Raspbian Check the [Phoenix learning guide](https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/learning.html) for more information. ### What is Elixir? [Elixir](https://elixir-lang.org) is a dynamic, functional language created to use all the maturity of Erlang (30 years old!) in these days, in an easy way. It has similarities with Ruby, specially on syntax, so Ruby developers are quite excited with the rapid growing of Elixir. A full-stack Ruby developer can learn how to use Elixir and Phoenix in just a few weeks! In Elixir we have a command called `mix`, which is a helper to create projects, testing, run migrations and [much more](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/mix-otp/introduction-to-mix). We'll use it later on in this tutorial. Check the [Elixir documentation](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/introduction) for more information. ## Requirements To follow this tutorial, you'll need to have installed: - Elixir [installation instructions](https://elixir-lang.org/install) - Phoenix Framework [installation instructions](https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/installation.html) - PostgreSQL (if you need to use MySQL server, check [Phoenix instructions](https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/ecto.html#using-mysql)) ### Create a new Phoenix project Open your terminal and go to the directory you wish to create your project. You don't need to create an empty directory for the project's files, because the `mix` command will do it for us. When we call `mix` command, we'll pass two arguments: - The task we want it to run: `phoenix.new` - And the parameter `phoenix.new` requires, which is the name of the new project. In this case, we're calling it `hello_gitlab_ci`, but you're free to set your own name: ```shell mix phoenix.new hello_gitlab_ci ``` When asked, answer `Y` to fetch and install dependencies. If everything went fine, you'll get an output like this: ![mix phoenix.new](img/mix-phoenix-new.png) Now, our project is located inside the directory with the same name we pass to `mix` command, for example, `~/GitLab/hello_gitlab_ci`. If we take a look at the directory, we'll see the Phoenix files and the dependencies needed to run. ### Initialize the PostgreSQL database By default, Phoenix requires a PostgreSQL database to store whatever we need to store in our app. In this case, we'll only create an empty database. First, we need to navigate to our recently created project's directory, and then execute again `mix`. This time, `mix` will receive the parameter `ecto.create`, which is the task to create our new database. [Ecto](https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.html) is the database wrapper for Elixir. When we do run `mix` the first time after creating our project, it will compile our files to bytecode, which will be interpreted by Erlang VM. In the next times, it will only compile our changes. Run the commands below to create our empty database: ```shell cd hello_gitlab_ci mix ecto.create ``` We expect to see this output at the end of the command: ```plaintext Generated hello_gitlab_ci app The database for HelloGitlabCi.Repo has been created ``` > **Note:** Phoenix assumes that our PostgreSQL database will have a `postgres` user account with the correct permissions and a password of `postgres`. If it's not your case, check [Ecto's instructions](https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.html#module-repositories). ### Start Phoenix server Now, it's time to see if everything we did until now went well. We'll call `mix` again, this time with `phoenix.server` parameter, which will start Phoenix's HTTP Server. ```shell mix phoenix.server ``` This will be the output to this command: ```plaintext [info] Running HelloGitlabCi.Endpoint with Cowboy using http://localhost:4000 23 May 11:44:35 - info: compiling 23 May 11:44:37 - info: compiled 6 files into 2 files, copied 3 in 9.8 sec ``` Now, we have our app running locally. We can preview it directly on our browser. Let's open [`localhost:4000`](http://localhost:4000) to see our Phoenix Framework welcome page. If the link do not work, open [`127.0.0.1:4000`](http://127.0.0.1:4000) instead and later, configure your OS to point `localhost` to `127.0.0.1`. ![mix phoenix.server](img/mix-phoenix-server.png) Great, now we have a local Phoenix Server running our app. Locally, our application is running in an `iex` session. [iex](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/introduction.html#interactive-mode) stands for Interactive Elixir. In this interactive mode, we can type any Elixir expression and get its result. To exit `iex`, we need to press `Ctrl+C` twice. So, when we need to stop the Phoenix server, we have to hit `Ctrl+C` twice. ## Introducing GitLab CI/CD With GitLab, we can manage our development workflow, improve our productivity, track issues, perform code review, and much more from a single platform. With GitLab CI/CD, we can be much more productive, because every time we, or our co-workers push any code, GitLab CI/CD will build and test the changes, telling us in realtime if anything goes wrong. Certainly, when our application starts to grow, we'll need more developers working on the same project and this process of building and testing can easily become a mess without proper management. That's also why GitLab CI/CD is so important to our application. Every time someone pushes its code to GitLab, we'll quickly know if their changes broke something or not. We don't need to stop everything we're doing to test manually and locally every change our team does. Let's see this in practice. ## Adjusting Phoenix configuration Now, we need to adjust our Phoenix configuration before configuring GitLab CI/CD. There is a directory (`config`) in your Phoenix project that contains a configuration file for every environment it can run. Since we will work with a single environment, we'll edit just the test configuration file (`test.exs`). But, why do we need to adjust our configuration? Well, GitLab CI/CD builds and tests our code in one isolated virtual machine, called [Runner](../../runners/README.md), using Docker technology. In this Runner, GitLab CI/CD has access to everything our Phoenix application need to run, exactly as we have in our `localhost`, but we have to tell GitLab CI/CD where to create and find this database using system variables. This way, GitLab CI/CD will create our test database inside the Runner, just like we do when running our Phoenix in our `localhost`. - Open `hello_gitlab_ci/config/test.exs` on your favorite code editor - Go to **Configure your database** session and edit the block to include `System.get_env`: ```elixir # Configure your database config :hello_gitlab_ci, HelloGitlabCi.Repo, adapter: Ecto.Adapters.Postgres, username: System.get_env("POSTGRES_USER") || "postgres", password: System.get_env("POSTGRES_PASSWORD") || "postgres", database: System.get_env("POSTGRES_DB") || "hello_gitlab_ci_test", hostname: System.get_env("POSTGRES_HOST") || "localhost", pool: Ecto.Adapters.SQL.Sandbox ``` We'll need these system variables later on. - Create an empty file named `.gitkeep` into `hello_gitlab_ci/priv/repo/migrations` As our project is still fresh, we don't have any data on our database, so, the `migrations` directory will be empty. Without `.gitkeep`, Git will not upload this empty directory and we'll got an error when running our test on GitLab. > **Note:** If we add a folder via the GitLab UI, GitLab itself will add the `.gitkeep` to that new dir. Now, let's run a local test and see if everything we did didn't break anything. ## Testing Earlier, when we created our project, we ran `mix phoenix.new`. This task created everything a Phoenix application needed, including some unit tests into `hello_gitlab_ci/test` directory. Let's run a new task with `mix` to run those tests for us. This time, the parameter expected is `test`. We can add `--trace` parameter for debugging purposes. In your terminal, navigate to the directory `hello_gitlab_ci` and run: ```shell mix test ``` Our expected result is this: ```plaintext .... Finished in 0.7 seconds 4 tests, 0 failures Randomized with seed 610000 ``` Our test was successful. It's time to push our files to GitLab. ## Configuring CI/CD Pipeline The first step is to create a new file called `.gitlab-ci.yml` in `hello_gitlab_ci` directory of our project. - The easiest way to do this is to click on **Set up CI/CD** on project's main page: ![Set up CI](img/set_up_ci_v12_6.png) - On the next screen, we can use a template with Elixir tests already included. Click on **Apply a template** and select **Elixir**: ![Select template](img/select_template_v12_6.png) This template file tells GitLab CI/CD about what we wish to do every time a new commit is made. However, we have to adapt it slightly to run a Phoenix app. - The first line tells GitLab what Docker image will be used. Remember when we learn about Runners, the isolated virtual machine where GitLab CI/CD build and test our application? This virtual machine must have all dependencies to run our application. This is where a Docker image is needed. The correct image will provide the entire system for us. As we are focusing on testing (not deploying), you can use the [elixir:latest](https://hub.docker.com/_/elixir) docker image, which already has the dependencies for running Phoenix tests installed, such as Elixir and Erlang: ```yaml image: elixir:latest ``` - We'll only use `postgres`, so we can delete the `mysql` and `redis` lines from the `services` section: ```yaml services: - postgres:latest ``` - Now, we'll create a new section called `variables`, before the `before_script` section: ```yaml variables: POSTGRES_DB: hello_gitlab_ci_test POSTGRES_HOST: postgres POSTGRES_USER: postgres POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "postgres" MIX_ENV: "test" ``` Above, we set up the values for GitLab CI/CD to authenticate into PostgreSQL, like we did in `config/test.exs` earlier. The `POSTGRES_USER` and `POSTGRES_PASSWORD` values are used by the `postgres` service to create a user with those credentials. - In the `before_script` section, we'll add some commands to prepare everything for the test: ```yaml before_script: - mix local.rebar --force - mix local.hex --force - mix deps.get --only test - mix ecto.create - mix ecto.migrate ``` This ensures that [rebar3](https://www.rebar3.org) and [hex](https://hex.pm) are both installed before attempting to fetch the dependencies that are required to run the tests. Next, the `postgres` db is created and migrated with `ecto`, to ensure it's up-to-date. - Finally, we'll leave the `mix` section unchanged. Let's take a look at the updated file after the changes: ```yaml image: elixir:latest services: - postgres:latest variables: POSTGRES_DB: hello_gitlab_ci_test POSTGRES_HOST: postgres POSTGRES_USER: postgres POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "postgres" MIX_ENV: "test" before_script: - mix local.rebar --force - mix local.hex --force - mix deps.get --only test - mix ecto.create - mix ecto.migrate mix: script: - mix test ``` For safety, we can check if we get any syntax errors before submitting this file to GitLab. Copy the contents of `.gitlab-ci.yml` and paste it on [GitLab CI/CD Lint tool](https://gitlab.com/ci/lint). Please note that this link will only work for logged in users. ## Watching the build I don't know about you, but I love to watch that black screen being filled with compilation output. With this, I can feel the happiness of something I made working correctly. On `localhost` it's easy to watch our build, but on GitLab, is it possible? Yes! Let's go to **Pipelines** and see GitLab doing the job. Just click on **Pipelines** to find the actual running build job. ![Pipelines](img/pipelines.png) Click on build's ID to watch the entire process. If everything went as expected, we can wait for the **Build succeeded** at the end of the process! :) ```shell $ mix test .... Finished in 0.3 seconds 4 tests, 0 failures Randomized with seed 206909 Build succeeded ``` If we take a look at the project's main page on the GitLab UI, we can see the status of the last build made by GitLab CI/CD. Time to show the world our green build badge! Navigate to your project's **Settings > CI/CD** and expand **General pipelines settings**. Scroll down to **Pipeline status** and copy the Markdown code for your badge. Paste it on the top of your `README.md` file, to let people outside of our project see if our latest code is running without errors. When we finish this edition, GitLab will start another build and show a **build running** badge. It is expected, after all we just configured GitLab CI/CD to do this for every push! But you may think "Why run build and tests for simple things like editing README.md?" and it is a good question. For changes that don't affect your application, you can add the keyword [`[ci skip]`](../../yaml/README.md#skipping-jobs) to commit message and the build related to that commit will be skipped. In the end, we finally got our pretty green build succeeded badge! By outputting the result on the README file, it shows to whoever lands on your project's page that your code is up-to-date and working properly. ## Conclusion When we have a growing application with many developers working on it, or when we have an open source project being watched and contributed by the community, it is really important to have our code permanently working. GitLab CI/CD is a time saving powerful tool to help us maintain our code organized and working. As we could see in this post, GitLab CI/CD is really really easy to configure and use. We have [many other reasons](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2015/02/03/7-reasons-why-you-should-be-using-ci/) to keep using GitLab CI/CD. The benefits to our teams will be huge! ## References - [GitLab CI/CD introductory guide](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2015/12/14/getting-started-with-gitlab-and-gitlab-ci/) - [GitLab CI/CD full Documentation](../../README.md) - [GitLab Runners documentation](../../runners/README.md) - [Using Docker images documentation](../../docker/using_docker_images.md)