Is there an easy way to view Gitlab-CI artifacts?

Question

We're migrating our CI from Phabricator/Jenkins to Gitlab and the UX for viewing docs is really not very good. The current workflow from the Merge Request page is

Click build icon > click stage (e.g. build docs) > click Browse button under Job artifacts > click docs directory > click _build directory > click html directory > click index.html link

Seven clicks in all. With Phabricator, the Jenkins bot used to comment in the MR with a link to the docs page, so you could view the docs with a single click. Is there a way to do this with Gitlab?

(I would also like to do the same for coverage and lint reports, but will ask those questions separately, unless anyone has an easy solution that could be applied to all three types of artifact.)

Answer 1

You can use artifacts:expose_as, which links the created artifacts in a section below the most recent pipeline status on the MR overview page.

Example job:

job:
  image: alpine:latest
  script:
    - echo foo > bar.txt
  artifacts:
    expose_as: 'Job Report'
    paths: 
      - 'bar.txt'

Common coverage and lint reports can be included with artifacts:reports.

Another option is to make use of the predictable URL pattern, as described by @KamilCuk, with environment:url. Here is an example to expose storybook:

storybook:
  extends: .storybook_build
  environment:
    name: storybook-$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG
    url: 'https://<org>.gitlab.io/-/<path>/<project>/-/jobs/$CI_JOB_ID/artifacts/storybook/index.html'
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - 'storybook/'
    expire_in: 4 weeks
  allow_failure: true

This is just one click away from the MR page.