How to setup Gitlab Web Hook to deployment

Question

I have created a new project and branches in that project. I need to configure one particular branch to my development server. Whenever pushed to that branch it should be automatically deployed to the server.

I have tried with Web Hook in Gitlab. But it did not work. Please give a ref. step by step link. What configurations I need to do in my local machine as well as the server system. I have found that we need to setup some "Post Receive WebHook in server", can someone please give an idea.

"Here I will explain what is in my hand. The server already setup without git. I have one project inside one branch "develop". I have cloned in my local and pushing to the branch. It is working fine. (I am using window machine git bash). But here after when I push some update I need to push to server. So, I have tried with Web Hook. But it is not working. "

Answer 1

I also ran into this issue, there is hardly any documentation for beginners.

Here are the steps I took to get this working with gitlab:

make sure to have an SSH key on the server that you want to auto deploy on, for me this was an Ubuntu server. I had to generate an SSH key for the www-data so the user could connect to the gitlab server.

I had to run this command to generate an ssh key for the www-data user:

sudo -u www-data ssh-keygen -t rsa

After you generate the ssh key you have to add it to the gitlab to your projects deploy keys. (project->settings->deploy keys).

now goto the folder that you want your project to push to (for me it was /var/www/website/) and do the following:

git clone origin-url .

the dot at the end makes it so it only pulls the files, and doesn't include the folder your project is in on gitlab.

then...

chgrp -R www-data .git
chmod -R g+rwxs .git

That gives permission to the git folder to execute php commands and adds the www-data group to the folder.

after that i had to make a script that would run the commands i wanted when the hook was called.

here is the php that i am using, i named the file webhook.php

<?php

if($payload = file_get_contents('php://input')) {
    try {
            $payload = json_decode($payload);
    } catch(Exception $ex) {
            echo $ex;
            exit(0);
    }
    // put the branch you want here
    if($payload->ref != "refs/heads/master") {
            echo "wrong head";
            exit(0);
    }
    //put the branch you want here, as well as the directory your site is in
    $result = `cd /var/www/website && git fetch origin && git merge origin/master`;
   
    echo $result;
} else {
    echo "failed request";
} 
?>

the webhook.php will need execute permissions from www-data as well.

once all that is done you will need to make the webhook in your project (project->settings->webhooks)

add the url to the webhook.php

I put my webhook.php in a subdomain on the server so I could use it to push different sites with the same file.

http://deploy.website.com/webhook.php

I also added used http://requestb.in so that I could make sure of the data that was getting sent to the server.

Not sure if i'm forgetting anything, but I think this was everything i did