hilyas / books

A sample CI/CD pipeline for a Django application (books), using Docker, Github Actions, ArgoCD and Helm.

books

A sample CI/CD pipeline for a Django application (books), using Docker, Github Actions, ArgoCD and Helm.

Setup

Requirements

• Python 3.8 and Django 4.0 to run the app (currently just the Django boilerplate)
• Docker to build and push the images
• Helm to package the application
• Kubernetes, running on k3s, provisioned with k3d, to run the application
• ArgoCD for manage the application deployment
• Github Actions automate the build of the application

Local Configuration and Deployment

• Create a k8s cluster
  • k3d cluster create dev-cluster -a 2
• Install ArgoCD and configure it with the Github repository, create the argocd namespace first
  • kubectl apply -n argocd -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/argoproj/argo-cd/stable/manifests/install.yaml
• Create a namespace for the application, and add a secret to hold the ghrc credentials
  • kubectl create -n books secret docker-registry ghcr-secret --docker-username hilyas --docker-password $CR_PAT --docker-server ghcr.io, where $CR_PAT is the Github Personal Access Token.
• Configure the helm chart to pull the images from the ghrc, using the secret created above
• Create the app in ArgoCD and sync it
  • argocd app create books --repo https://github.com/hilyas/books.git --path helm/books --values values.dev.yaml --dest-server https://kubernetes.default.svc --dest-namespace books --sync-policy automated --auto-prune --self-heal
• Port forward the ArgoCD server to access the UI
  • kubectl port-forward svc/argocd-server -n argocd 8080:443
• Port forward the books service to access the application
  • kubectl port-forward svc/books -n books 8000:8000

To obtain the admin password for the ArgoCD UI run:

• kubectl -n argocd get secret argocd-initial-admin-secret -o jsonpath="{.data.password}" | base64 -d && echo

Local dev uses a k3s cluster, with ArgoCD (installed in the argocd namespace) for deployment. Github actions uses the GITHUB_TOKEN to authenticate with the Github container registry and push images to it. A Github Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate with ArgoCD to pull the images and deploy the application.

After every commit to the main branch, the application is automatically deployed to the dev cluster, using ArgoCD. ArgoCD deploys the application to the dev cluster, in the books namespace. Docker images can be built and run locally before committing to the main branch. Useful to quickly test changes to the application.

There are many improvements that can be made but this is a good starting point, for example:

• Considering multiple environments (dev, staging, prod)
• Using helmfile to manage the helm releases
• Using a develop branch and a main branch
• Use a different database system (PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc)

Note: the apps directory contains Django code only, without helm configuration. The helm directory contains the helm charts for the various Django apps in the repo. This can be changed to have a single helm chart for the whole application, or a helm chart for each Django app, or a helm chart for each Django app and a helm chart for the whole application.