1. Documentation
×

Triggering Builds

Build Triggers Overview

When defining a BuildConfig, you can define triggers to control the circumstances in which the BuildConfig should be run. The following build triggers are available:

Webhook Triggers

Webhook triggers allow you to trigger a new build by sending a request to the OpenShift Origin API endpoint. You can define these triggers using GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Generic webhooks.

Currently, OpenShift Origin webhooks support only the analogous versions of the push event for each of the Git-based source code management systems (SCMs). All other event types are ignored.

When the push events are processed, the OpenShift Origin master host confirms if the branch reference inside the event matches the branch reference in the corresponding BuildConfig. If so, it then checks out the exact commit reference noted in the webhook event on the OpenShift Origin build. If they do not match, no build is triggered.

oc new-app and oc new-build will create GitHub and Generic webhook triggers automatically, but any other needed webhook triggers must be added manually (see Setting Triggers).

For all webhooks, you must define a Secret with a key named WebHookSecretKey and the value being the value to be supplied when invoking the webhook. The webhook definition must then reference the secret. The secret ensures the uniqueness of the URL, preventing others from triggering the build. The value of the key will be compared to the secret provided during the webhook invocation.

For example here is a GitHub webhook with a reference to a secret named mysecret:

type: "GitHub"
github:
  secretReference:
    name: "mysecret"

The secret is then defined as follows. Note that the value of the secret is base64 encoded as is required for any data field of a Secret object.

- kind: Secret
  apiVersion: v1
  metadata:
    name: mysecret
    creationTimestamp:
  data:
    WebHookSecretKey: c2VjcmV0dmFsdWUx

GitHub Webhooks

GitHub webhooks handle the call made by GitHub when a repository is updated. When defining the trigger, you must specify a secret, which will be part of the URL you supply to GitHub when configuring the webhook.

Example GitHub webhook definition:

type: "GitHub"
github:
  secretReference:
    name: "mysecret"

The secret used in the webhook trigger configuration is not the same as secret field you encounter when configuring webhook in GitHub UI. The former is to make the webhook URL unique and hard to predict, the latter is an optional string field used to create HMAC hex digest of the body, which is sent as an X-Hub-Signature header.

The payload URL is returned as the GitHub Webhook URL by the oc describe command (see Displaying Webhook URLs), and is structured as follows:

http://<openshift_api_host:port>/oapi/v1/namespaces/<namespace>/buildconfigs/<name>/webhooks/<secret>/github

To configure a GitHub Webhook:

  1. Describe the build configuration to get the webhook URL:

    $ oc describe bc <name>

  2. Copy the webhook URL, replacing <secret> with your secret value.

  3. Follow the GitHub setup instructions to paste the webhook URL into your GitHub repository settings.

Gogs supports the same webhook payload format as GitHub. Therefore, if you are using a Gogs server, you can define a GitHub webhook trigger on your BuildConfig and trigger it via your Gogs server also.

Given a file containing a valid JSON payload, such as payload.json, you can manually trigger the webhook via curl:

$ curl -H "X-GitHub-Event: push" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -k -X POST --data-binary @payload.json https://<openshift_api_host:port>/oapi/v1/namespaces/<namespace>/buildconfigs/<name>/webhooks/<secret>/github

The -k argument is only necessary if your API server does not have a properly signed certificate.

GitLab Webhooks

GitLab webhooks handle the call made by GitLab when a repository is updated. As with the GitHub triggers, you must specify a secret. The following example is a trigger definition YAML within the BuildConfig:

type: "GitLab"
gitlab:
  secretReference:
    name: "mysecret"

The payload URL is returned as the GitLab Webhook URL by the oc describe command (see Displaying Webhook URLs), and is structured as follows:

http://<openshift_api_host:port>/oapi/v1/namespaces/<namespace>/buildconfigs/<name>/webhooks/<secret>/gitlab

To configure a GitLab Webhook:

  1. Describe the build configuration to get the webhook URL:

    $ oc describe bc <name>

  2. Copy the webhook URL, replacing <secret> with your secret value.

  3. Follow the GitLab setup instructions to paste the webhook URL into your GitLab repository settings.

Given a file containing a valid JSON payload, such as payload.json, you can manually trigger the webhook via curl:

$ curl -H "X-GitLab-Event: Push Hook" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -k -X POST --data-binary @payload.json https://<openshift_api_host:port>/oapi/v1/namespaces/<namespace>/buildconfigs/<name>/webhooks/<secret>/gitlab

The -k argument is only necessary if your API server does not have a properly signed certificate.

Bitbucket Webhooks

Bitbucket webhooks handle the call made by Bitbucket when a repository is updated. Similar to the previous triggers, you must specify a secret. The following example is a trigger definition YAML within the BuildConfig:

type: "Bitbucket"
bitbucket:
  secretReference:
    name: "mysecret"

The payload URL is returned as the Bitbucket Webhook URL by the oc describe command (see Displaying Webhook URLs), and is structured as follows:

http://<openshift_api_host:port>/oapi/v1/namespaces/<namespace>/buildconfigs/<name>/webhooks/<secret>/bitbucket

To configure a Bitbucket Webhook:

  1. Describe the build configuration to get the webhook URL:

    $ oc describe bc <name>

  2. Copy the webhook URL, replacing <secret> with your secret value.

  3. Follow the Bitbucket setup instructions to paste the webhook URL into your Bitbucket repository settings.

Given a file containing a valid JSON payload, such as payload.json, you can manually trigger the webhook via curl:

$ curl -H "X-Event-Key: repo:push" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -k -X POST --data-binary @payload.json https://<openshift_api_host:port>/oapi/v1/namespaces/<namespace>/buildconfigs/<name>/webhooks/<secret>/bitbucket

The -k argument is only necessary if your API server does not have a properly signed certificate.

Generic Webhooks

Generic webhooks are invoked from any system capable of making a web request. As with the other webhooks, you must specify a secret, which will be part of the URL that the caller must use to trigger the build. The secret ensures the uniqueness of the URL, preventing others from triggering the build. The following is an example trigger definition YAML within the BuildConfig:

type: "Generic"
generic:
  secretReference:
    name: "mysecret"
  allowEnv: true (1)
1 Set to true to allow a generic webhook to pass in environment variables.

To set up the caller, supply the calling system with the URL of the generic webhook endpoint for your build:

http://<openshift_api_host:port>/oapi/v1/namespaces/<namespace>/buildconfigs/<name>/webhooks/<secret>/generic

The caller must invoke the webhook as a POST operation.

To invoke the webhook manually you can use curl:

$ curl -X POST -k https://<openshift_api_host:port>/oapi/v1/namespaces/<namespace>/buildconfigs/<name>/webhooks/<secret>/generic

The HTTP verb must be set to POST. The insecure -k flag is specified to ignore certificate validation. This second flag is not necessary if your cluster has properly signed certificates.

The endpoint can accept an optional payload with the following format:

git:
  uri: "<url to git repository>"
  ref: "<optional git reference>"
  commit: "<commit hash identifying a specific git commit>"
  author:
    name: "<author name>"
    email: "<author e-mail>"
  committer:
    name: "<committer name>"
    email: "<committer e-mail>"
  message: "<commit message>"
env: (1)
   - name: "<variable name>"
     value: "<variable value>"
1 Similar to the BuildConfig environment variables, the environment variables defined here are made available to your build. If these variables collide with the BuildConfig environment variables, these variables take precedence. By default, environment variables passed via webhook are ignored. Set the allowEnv field to true on the webhook definition to enable this behavior.

To pass this payload using curl, define it in a file named payload_file.yaml and run:

$ curl -H "Content-Type: application/yaml" --data-binary @payload_file.yaml -X POST -k https://<openshift_api_host:port>/oapi/v1/namespaces/<namespace>/buildconfigs/<name>/webhooks/<secret>/generic

The arguments are the same as the previous example with the addition of a header and a payload. The -H argument sets the Content-Type header to application/yaml or application/json depending on your payload format. The --data-binary argument is used to send a binary payload with newlines intact with the POST request.

OpenShift Origin permits builds to be triggered via the generic webhook even if an invalid request payload is presented (for example, invalid content type, unparsable or invalid content, and so on). This behavior is maintained for backwards compatibility. If an invalid request payload is presented, OpenShift Origin returns a warning in JSON format as part of its HTTP 200 OK response.

Displaying Webhook URLs

Use the following command to display any webhook URLs associated with a build configuration:

$ oc describe bc <name>

If the above command does not display any webhook URLs, then no webhook trigger is defined for that build configuration. See Setting Triggers to manually add triggers.

Image Change Triggers

Image change triggers allow your build to be automatically invoked when a new version of an upstream image is available. For example, if a build is based on top of a RHEL image, then you can trigger that build to run any time the RHEL image changes. As a result, the application image is always running on the latest RHEL base image.

Configuring an image change trigger requires the following actions:

  1. Define an ImageStream that points to the upstream image you want to trigger on:

    kind: "ImageStream"
apiVersion: "v1"
metadata:
  name: "ruby-20-centos7"

    This defines the image stream that is tied to a container image repository located at <system-registry>/<namespace>/ruby-20-centos7. The <system-registry> is defined as a service with the name docker-registry running in OpenShift Origin.

  2. If an image stream is the base image for the build, set the from field in the build strategy to point to the image stream:

    strategy:
  sourceStrategy:
    from:
      kind: "ImageStreamTag"
      name: "ruby-20-centos7:latest"

    In this case, the sourceStrategy definition is consuming the latest tag of the image stream named ruby-20-centos7 located within this namespace.

  3. Define a build with one or more triggers that point to image streams:

    type: "imageChange" (1)
imageChange: {}
type: "imagechange" (2)
imageChange:
  from:
    kind: "ImageStreamTag"
    name: "custom-image:latest"
    1 An image change trigger that monitors the ImageStream and Tag as defined by the build strategy’s from field. The imageChange object here must be empty.
    2 An image change trigger that monitors an arbitrary image stream. The imageChange part in this case must include a from field that references the ImageStreamTag to monitor.

When using an image change trigger for the strategy image stream, the generated build is supplied with an immutable Docker tag that points to the latest image corresponding to that tag. This new image reference will be used by the strategy when it executes for the build.

For other image change triggers that do not reference the strategy image stream, a new build will be started, but the build strategy will not be updated with a unique image reference.

In the example above that has an image change trigger for the strategy, the resulting build will be:

strategy:
  sourceStrategy:
    from:
      kind: "DockerImage"
      name: "172.30.17.3:5001/mynamespace/ruby-20-centos7:<immutableid>"

This ensures that the triggered build uses the new image that was just pushed to the repository, and the build can be re-run any time with the same inputs.

In addition to setting the image field for all Strategy types, for custom builds, the OPENSHIFT_CUSTOM_BUILD_BASE_IMAGE environment variable is checked. If it does not exist, then it is created with the immutable image reference. If it does exist then it is updated with the immutable image reference.

If a build is triggered due to a webhook trigger or manual request, the build that is created uses the <immutableid> resolved from the ImageStream referenced by the Strategy. This ensures that builds are performed using consistent image tags for ease of reproduction.

Image streams that point to container images in v1 Docker registries only trigger a build once when the image stream tag becomes available and not on subsequent image updates. This is due to the lack of uniquely identifiable images in v1 Docker registries.

Configuration Change Triggers

A configuration change trigger allows a build to be automatically invoked as soon as a new BuildConfig is created. The following is an example trigger definition YAML within the BuildConfig:

  type: "ConfigChange"

Configuration change triggers currently only work when creating a new BuildConfig. In a future release, configuration change triggers will also be able to launch a build whenever a BuildConfig is updated.

Setting Triggers Manually

Triggers can be added to and removed from build configurations with oc set triggers. For example, to set a GitHub webhook trigger on a build configuration, use:

$ oc set triggers bc <name> --from-github

To set an imagechange trigger, use

$ oc set triggers bc <name> --from-image='<image>'

To remove a trigger, add --remove:

$ oc set triggers bc <name> --from-bitbucket --remove

When a webhook trigger already exists, adding it again regenerates the webhook secret.

For more information, consult the help documentation with oc set triggers --help