integrate pretzel with appveyor

Pretzel is a static web site generator, much like Jekyll but in .net.
So while Jekyll users can use TravisCI or directly GitHub pages to generate their website we don't have this possibility with Pretzel.

Luckily, Appveyor provides the same features than TravisCI but in a Windows environment. And it is free, so you just have to create an account or login with your GitHub account.

Like travis, it is based on a yaml configuration file, named appveyor.yml, like the one for my website.

Preparation

First, we need to install pretzel:

install:
  - choco install pretzel -y

cache:
  - C:\tools\Pretzel -> appveyor.yml

The cache instruction indicates appveyor to store in cache the content of the C:\tools\Pretzel folder until the appveyor.yml is modified.

The installation folder of pretzel will soon be modified to comply to Chocolatey rules.

Build

The build_script is simple: just run the bake command of pretzel on the site source.

build_script:
- C:\tools\Pretzel\pretzel bake src

artifacts:
- path: src/_site
  name: compiled_site

Since the pretzel folder is in the appveyor cache, we cannot use the pretzel exe from the PATH, we must use the full path.

The artifacts instruction defines the files or folder you want to save after a build. You can access and download these files directly on the appveyor website.

Test

test: off

So I think this line is self-explanatory: no test at all. For now at least, I plan to add a link checker soon. And maybe some sort of integration tests, we'll see.

Deploy

Since this post I have set an incremental FTP deploy with creep.

So, now the goal is to deploy the artifact in a FTP server.
You can also deploy it to GitHub, Azure and other, appveyor support quite a few deployment supports.

before_deploy:
- ps: .\Clear-FtpDirectory.ps1

deploy:
- provider: FTP
  host: laedit.net
  protocol: ftp
  username: zlaeditn12713ne
  password:
    secure: eK/zCvZEGU6BcRfo1CoYnlrLD7SoyaUyOb3aIq8CkmQ=
  folder: /httpdocs/laedit
  application: src\compiled_site.zip

The before_deploy instruction run a powershell (indicated by the ps: prefix) which cleans the destination folder.
I use powershell but you can use a Fake or your favorite build helper if you prefer.

Then the deploy instruction list all the deploy informations:

• provider type
• FTP host
• protocol used
• username used
• password encrypted by appveyor and only decrypted during build (and not accessible during PR build +1 for security)
• destination folder
• the artifact to deploy

And since there is no constraints to the deploy, it is executed at each commit.

Conclusion

You now know how to use pretzel and appveyor to build and publish your shiny static website
You are just a commit away to your next post.