Cardshifter web client deploy script

Question

The Cardshifter web client is coming along! The game client is a web app written mostly in Angular.js and is hosted at at play.cardshifter.com.

@SimonForsberg (who runs the server) is getting tired of the web people always working tirelessly and updating the code, and asked for a script that can do deployment for him.

Requirements

• Upload the contents of dist/ to /assets/ and www/ to / through FTP.
• Post a message to the chat bot Duga using a HTTP request when done.
• Can be run automatically on Travis CI.

Background

I'm quite new to JavaScript and Node.js land. I chose to still use it for three reasons:

1. Dependency management already set up with Npm
2. Project is already JavaScript; easier maintenance
3. Fun to learn :)

I chose to pass credentials through environment variables because it looks like Travis CI handles encrypted variables well. A person that has the credentials can also set up a simple script to run the deployment with those specific variables.

@skiwi told me about promises after having written the code originally, but it prompted me to convert the code to use them instead of normal callbacks. I think this lead to a great improvement of the readability of the code.

ftp-deploy was acting up when uploading dist/ and www/ separately, which is why the script is now first copying everything to a temporary directory with a structure emulating the server. One problem was that if remoteRoot didn't exist, the upload would fail.

Simon hasn't told me the address of the FTP server yet, which is why I left localhost:2121 in there.

/* Deploy the client to play.cardshifter.com
 *
 * How to use:
 * 1. Build the project and make sure that everything is in order.
 * 2. Set up environment variables (see below).
 * 3. Run `npm run deploy`.
 * 4. Profit!
 *
 * Environment variables used:
 * - DEPLOY_FTP_USERNAME: Username used to log in through FTP.
 * - DEPLOY_FTP_PASSWORD: Password used to log in through FTP.
 * - DEPLOY_DUGA_KEY: Duga API key. If not set the chat bot post is skipped.
 */
'use strict';
var copy = require('recursive-copy');
var FtpDeploy = require('ftp-deploy');
var path = require('path');
var request = require('request-promise');
var temp = require('temp').track();
function ftpConfig(local, remote) {
 return {
 username: process.env.DEPLOY_FTP_USERNAME,
 password: process.env.DEPLOY_FTP_PASSWORD,
 host: "localhost",
 port: 2121,
 localRoot: local,
 remoteRoot: remote
 };
};
var chatBotRequest = {
 apiKey: process.env.DEPLOY_DUGA_KEY,
 roomId: 16134,
 text: "New web client version uploaded to http://play.cardshifter.com/."
};
var chatBotConfig = {
 url: "http://stats.zomis.net/GithubHookSEChatService/bot/jsonPost",
 method: "POST",
 headers: {
 "Content-Type": "application/json"
 }
}
function postToChat(config, botRequest) {
 return new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
 var json = JSON.stringify(botRequest, ["apiKey", "roomId", "text"]);
 config.headers["Content-Length"] = json.length;
 config.body = json;
 request(config)
 .then(function(body) {
 resolve(body);
 })
 });
}
function setupFiles() {
 // ftp-deploy doesn't handle uploading from multiple directories well
 return new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
 temp.mkdir("cardshifter-deploy", function (err, tempDir) {
 if (err) {
 reject(err);
 }
 Promise.all([
 copy(path.join(__dirname, "..", "www"), tempDir),
 copy(path.join(__dirname, "..", "dist"), path.join(tempDir, "assets"))
 ])
 .then(function() {
 resolve(tempDir);
 })
 .catch(function(err) {
 reject(err);
 });
 });
 });
}
function deployFtp(config) {
 return new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
 new FtpDeploy().deploy(config, function(err) {
 if (err) {
 reject(err);
 } else {
 resolve();
 }
 });
 });
}
setupFiles()
.then(function(dir) {
 var config = ftpConfig(dir, "/");
 console.log("Deploying to ftp://" + config.host + ":" + config.port + "...");
 return deployFtp(config);
})
.then(function() {
 console.log("FTP deployment successful.");
 if (chatBotRequest.apiKey) {
 console.log("Posting message to " + chatBotConfig.url + "...");
 return postToChat(chatBotConfig, chatBotRequest);
 }
})
.then(function(responseBody) {
 if (responseBody) {
 console.log(responseBody);
 }
})
.catch(function(err) {
 console.error("Error: " + err);
});

• Dan: Why don't you guys use Amazon S3 for static assets? It's not free but it's cheap enough to essentially be free (something crazy like 0.9c for 10k requests)
• Seiyria: One other thing you might look into is gulp. Particularly as it has modules for ftp, and all of the related stuff there. I'm not familiar with Duga though, so I can't help much there.
• Simon Forsberg: Server address? Try play.cardshifter.com ;)

Answer 1

There's a few points you could improve on, but for the most part, your code looks good.

---

Funny memes are funny, but, don't belong in comments :-(

 * How to use:
 * 1. Build the project and make sure that everything is in order.
 * 2. Set up environment variables (see below).
 * 3. Run `npm run deploy`.
 * 4. Profit!

On a related note, this kinda thing probably belongs in one of the readme.md files, or a GitHub wiki page for the web client.

---

You can actually omit the vars when you declare a few at once:

var copy = require('recursive-copy');
var FtpDeploy = require('ftp-deploy');
var path = require('path');
var request = require('request-promise');
var temp = require('temp').track();

Which can become:

var copy = require('recursive-copy'),
 FtpDeploy = require('ftp-deploy'),
 path = require('path'),
 request = require('request-promise'),
 temp = require('temp').track();

Although, this can be dangerous if you forget the commas, as they can rise through the function to find a higher-level variable declaration, and become global in the process. You can read about that here.

---

You shouldn't have random magic numbers/spells everywhere, use a spellbook (define them) instead.

 host: "localhost",
 port: 2121
 roomId: 16134,

Or, make them parameters for input.

---

Remember that the chatrooms you're sending messages to support Markdown, it's best to use it.

text: "New web client version uploaded to http://play.cardshifter.com/."

into:

text: "New web client version uploaded to [play.cardshifter.com](http://play.cardshifter.com/)."

---

Consider using .joins in future, also, JavaScript's string concatenation is a bit slow. Array joins run a bit faster, and let you use specified 'glue' also.

console.log("Deploying to ftp://" + config.host + ":" + config.port + "...");

---

Do you need to include the Content-Length header in the API request?

Probably not.

 config.headers["Content-Length"] = json.length;

---

The following could be a ternary:

 if (err) {
 reject(err);
 } else {
 resolve();
 }

which can turn into:

err ? reject(err) : resolve();

• jacwah: Are host, port and roomId really that magic? They're not everywhere: I put all configuration in easy to edit objects at the top of the file.
• Quill: Well, the roomId is pretty magic, the others are somewhat magic
• woutr_be: Is there a reason why you would omit variable declarations? In my opinion it makes it harder to read and harder to add more variables. As you might forget to overlook the ; and ,.
• Dan: Don't omit var. It's harder to maintain and arguably doesn't improve readability at all. This is especially true with ES6 around the corner, where you distinguish between const and let.
• Ethan Bierlein: I'd disagree about funny comments. If they're used sparingly, like in this case, I'd say they're okay.