auth VS login

This workflow will authenticate with Google Cloud using the Google Cloud auth GitHub Action and use Docker to authenticate and push to the registry. To make this workflow work (or flow?) we need to set up some Google Cloud resources and add in those values for our environment variables. Make sure to add in the value for PROJECT_ID where you have permission to create resources. The value for IMAGE_NAME can be anything — it’ll be created the first time this workflow runs:

The issue of integration with other tools is also quite strange. Of course, this is not directly related to github actions. For example, what needs to be done to use cloud run https://github.com/google-github-actions/auth#setting-up-wor...

While it is commonly associated with AWS, and their AWS IAM service, IAM is not limited to their platform. All cloud providers, such as Google Cloud and Azure DevOps, offer IAM solutions that allow users to access resources and systems. If you are looking for specific AWS IAM best practices, look no further than our AWS IAM Security Best Practices article:\ For the rest of this article, we will look at the generic best practices that have evolved over the last decade around each part of the basic question we started with, "who can access what?":

I found this but I don't quite get how it works. I haven't done all the steps yet but I get how to set it up. I just don't understand how this just magically authenticates future steps since my code still needs a token. Should I use this to authenticate the script? If so, how do I do it and what would I need in my code? If not what should I use instead?

Cloud Identity and Access Management: This service provides fine-grained control over who has access to what resources within an organization's Google Cloud environment. It can be used to quickly revoke access to compromised accounts or limit access to sensitive resources. https://cloud.google.com/iam

I use google-github-actions/auth in the first step in my job to authenticate to GCP. At this point, I have 6 different GitHub secrets to test out the concept. Each branch has two secrets with the format BRANCH_WIP and BRANCH_SA.

There are 2 core parts authentication to GCP and App Engine deployment. Authentication is performed using auth, while a deployment uses deploy-appengine.

You should have a look at using workload identity federation and OIDC tokens. There’s a guide on https://github.com/google-github-actions/auth It means you no longer need to hardcode service account credentials in GitHub secrets anymore.

Yes, there is a deploy-appengine action that automates the whole App Engine deployment process. Indeed, it uses gcloud commands underneath too. Either way, both approaches need an auth action to authenticate to GCP before any task can be performed.

name: Static Web App - Build and Deploy 🏗️ on: push: branches: - main pull_request: types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, closed] branches: - main workflow_dispatch: permissions: id-token: write contents: write pull-requests: write env: LOCATION: westeurope STATICWEBAPPNAME: blog.johnnyreilly.com jobs: build_and_deploy_swa_job: if: github.event_name == 'push' || (github.event_name == 'pull_request' && github.event.action != 'closed') runs-on: ubuntu-latest name: Site build and deploy 🏗️ steps: - name: Checkout 📥 uses: actions/checkout@v3 # Auth between GitHub and Azure is handled by https://github.com/jongio/github-azure-oidc # https://github.com/Azure/login#sample-workflow-that-uses-azure-login-action-using-oidc-to-run-az-cli-linux # other login options are possible too - name: AZ CLI login 🔑 uses: azure/login@v1 with: client-id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_CLIENT_ID }} tenant-id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_TENANT_ID }} subscription-id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID }} - name: Get preview URL 📝 id: static_web_app_preview_url uses: azure/CLI@v1 with: inlineScript: | DEFAULTHOSTNAME=$(az staticwebapp show -n '${{ env.STATICWEBAPPNAME }}' | jq -r '.defaultHostname') PREVIEW_URL="https://${DEFAULTHOSTNAME/.[1-9]./-${{github.event.pull_request.number }}.${{ env.LOCATION }}.1.}" echo "PREVIEW_URL=$PREVIEW_URL" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT - name: Setup Node.js 🔧 uses: actions/setup-node@v3 with: node-version: '18' cache: 'yarn' - name: Install and build site 🔧 run: | cd blog-website yarn install --frozen-lockfile yarn run build cp staticwebapp.config.json build/staticwebapp.config.json - name: Get API key 🔑 id: static_web_app_apikey uses: azure/CLI@v1 with: inlineScript: | APIKEY=$(az staticwebapp secrets list --name '${{ env.STATICWEBAPPNAME }}' | jq -r '.properties.apiKey') echo "APIKEY=$APIKEY" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT - name: Deploy site 🚀 id: static_web_app_build_and_deploy uses: Azure/static-web-apps-deploy@v1 with: azure_static_web_apps_api_token: ${{ steps.static_web_app_apikey.outputs.APIKEY }} repo_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # Used for Github integrations (i.e. PR comments) action: 'upload' skip_app_build: true app_location: '/blog-website/build' # App source code path api_location: '/blog-website/api' # Api source code path - optional outputs: preview-url: ${{steps.static_web_app_preview_url.outputs.PREVIEW_URL}} integration_tests_job: name: Integration tests 💡🏠 needs: build_and_deploy_swa_job if: github.event_name == 'pull_request' && github.event.action != 'closed' runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v3 - name: Wait for preview ${{ needs.build_and_deploy_swa_job.outputs.preview-url }} ⌚ id: static_web_app_wait_for_preview uses: nev7n/wait_for_response@v1 with: url: '${{ needs.build_and_deploy_swa_job.outputs.preview-url }}' responseCode: 200 timeout: 600000 interval: 1000 - uses: actions/setup-node@v3 with: node-version: 18 - name: Install dependencies run: npm ci working-directory: ./blog-website-tests - name: Install Playwright Browsers run: npx playwright install --with-deps working-directory: ./blog-website-tests - name: Run Playwright tests env: PLAYWRIGHT_TEST_BASE_URL: '${{ needs.build_and_deploy_swa_job.outputs.preview-url }}' run: npx playwright test working-directory: ./blog-website-tests - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3 if: always() with: name: playwright-report path: blog-website-tests/playwright-report/ retention-days: 30 close_pull_request_job: if: github.event_name == 'pull_request' && github.event.action == 'closed' runs-on: ubuntu-latest name: Cleanup staging 💥 steps: - name: AZ CLI login 🔑 uses: azure/login@v1 with: client-id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_CLIENT_ID }} tenant-id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_TENANT_ID }} subscription-id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID }} - name: Get API key 🔑 id: apikey uses: azure/CLI@v1 with: inlineScript: | APIKEY=$(az staticwebapp secrets list --name '${{ env.STATICWEBAPPNAME }}' | jq -r '.properties.apiKey') echo "APIKEY=$APIKEY" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT - name: Destroy staging environment 💥 id: closepullrequest uses: Azure/static-web-apps-deploy@v1 with: azure_static_web_apps_api_token: ${{ steps.apikey.outputs.APIKEY }} action: 'close'

Azure Login

We leveraged many existing GitHub Actions such as actions/checkout, azure/CLI and azure/login to build our pipeline. The built-in support for bash scripts provides all the flexibilities we needed to complete it.

Interesting - do you use https://github.com/Azure/login in GitHub Actions, or do you just create GitHub secrets and use those as env vars in the action steps?

In order for the workflow to successfully log in to the Azure subscriptions, you will need to make sure that you have created a Service Principal with the appropriate permissions. Once the Service Principal has been created you can add the details to a repository secret on GitHub. You can find out more about how to create this Service Principal on the ‘Azure/Login’ GitHub repo. Once created, you secrets might look like the below.

This error actually makes sense. If you've seen any of my recent talks / posts, you may have noticed that I talk about how each GitHub Action is just another GitHub repository that follows a specific standard. Each GitHub Action has an action.yml file in the root of the GitHub repository. This is available for the Azure/login action here.