FTP Deployment: smart file upload
FTP deployment is a tool for automated deployment to an FTP server.
There is nothing worse than uploading web applications to FTP server
manually, using tools like Total Commander. (Although, editing files directly on
the server and then trying to keep some kind of synchronization is even
worse
Once the process is automated, it costs you a fraction of time and minimizes the risk of error (didn't I forget to upload some files?). There are lots of sophisticated deploying techniques available today, but many people are still using FTP. This tool is designed for them.
FTP Deployment is a script written in PHP (requires PHP 5.4 or newer) and
will automate the entire process. Just say which local folder to upload and
where. This information is stored in a deployment.ini
text file,
which you can associate with deployment
script, so deployment will
become a one click thing.
php deployment deployment.ini
And what does the deployment.ini
file contain? Only the
remote
item is required, all the others are optional:
; log file (defaults to config file with .log extension) log = ... ; directory for temporary files (defaults to system's temporary directory) tempDir = /temp/deployment ; enable colored highlights? (defaults to autodetect) colors = yes [my site] ; Optional section (there may be more than one section). ; remote FTP server remote = ftp://user:secretpassword@ftp.example.com/directory ; you can use ftps:// or sftp:// protocols (sftp requires SSH2 extension) ; do not like to specify user & password in 'remote'? Use these options: user = ... password = ... ; FTP passive mode passiveMode = yes ; local path (optional) local = . ; run in test-mode? (can be enabled by option -t or --test) test = no ; files and directories to ignore ignore = " .git* project.pp[jx] /deployment.* /log temp/* !temp/.htaccess " ; is allowed to delete remote files? (defaults to yes) allowDelete = yes ; jobs to run before uploading before[] = local: lessc assets/combined.less assets/combined.css before[] = http://example.com/deployment.php?before ; jobs to run after uploading and before uploaded files are renamed afterUpload[] = http://example.com/deployment.php?afterUpload ; directories to purge after uploading purge[] = temp/cache ; jobs to run after everything (upload, rename, delete, purge) is done after[] = remote: unzip api.zip after[] = remote: chmod 0777 temp/cache ; change permissions after[] = http://example.com/deployment.php?after ; files to preprocess (defaults to *.js *.css) preprocess = no ; file which contains hashes of all uploaded files (defaults to .htdeployment) deploymentFile = .deployment
Configuration can also be stored in a PHP file.
In test mode (with -t
option) uploading or deleting files is
skipped, so you can use it to verify your settings.
Item ignore
uses the similar format to .gitignore
:
log - ignore all 'log' files or directories in all subfolders /log - ignore 'log' file or directory in the root app/log - ignore 'log' file or directory in the 'app' in the root data/* - ignore everything inside the 'data' folder, but the folder will be created on FTP !data/db/file.sdb - make an exception for the previous rule and do not ignore file 'file.sdb' project.pp[jx] - ignore files or folders 'project.ppj' and 'project.ppx'
Before the upload starts, after it finishes and after all jobs, you can
execute commands or call your scripts on the server (see before
,
afterUpload
, after
), which can, for example, switch
the server to a maintenance mode. If you use php-config – you can run lambda
function with deployment environment.
Syncing a large number of files attempts to run in (something like) a
transaction: all files are uploaded with extension .deploytmp
and
then quickly renamed.
An .htdeployment
file is uploaded to the server, which contains
MD5 hashes of all the files and is used for synchronization. So the next time
you run deployment
, only modified files are uploaded and deleted
files are deleted on server (if it is not forbidden by the
allowDelete
directive).
Uploaded files can be processed by a preprocessor. These rules are
predefined: .css
files are compressed using the Clean-CSS and
.js
minified by Google Closure Compiler via online services.
There is also a rule for expanding mod_include
Apache directives. For example, you can create a file
combined.js
:
<!--#include file="jquery.js" -->
<!--#include file="jquery.fancybox.js" -->
<!--#include file="main.js" -->
This tool will combine scripts together and minify them with the Closure Compiler to speed-up your website.
In the deployment.ini
, you can create multiple sections, i.e.
you may have separate rules for data and for application.
Installing FTP Deployment
FTP Deployment requires PHP 5.4 or later. It also requires openssl extensions for ftps:// and SSH2 extension for sftp:// connections.
The easiest way to obtain FTP Deployment is to download a single PHAR file.
Or you can install it using Composer:
composer create-project dg/ftp-deployment