Build and Deploy Hooks

Introduction

Internally, the webiny deploy command consists of two steps:

1. build - within this step, your application code gets compiled and is made ready for deployment
2. deploy - within this step, the compiled code, along with the defined cloud infrastructure resources gets deployed

In some cases, it might be necessary to run some code before or after build or deployment. For example, you may want to add some additional logging or validation.

This is why the webiny deploy command enables hooking onto a couple of its key lifecycle events:

1. pre-build
2. post-build
3. pre-deploy
4. post-deploy

The following diagram shows in which order these lifecycle events are triggered:

webiny deploy Command's Lifecycle Events

(click to enlarge)

We can hook onto any of these events via a dedicated plugin type, which we cover in the following section.

Creating a Hook

The following code demonstrates all of the plugin types we can use in order to hook onto the command’s key lifecycle events. We are defining them within the cli.plugins section of the object exported from the root webiny.project.ts file.

Watch Command Hooks

Except for the webiny deploy command, hooking onto key lifecycle events is also supported by the webiny watch command.

At the moment, via the hook-before-watch lifecycle event, we can perform additional steps once the command has been initialized, which is demonstrated by the following code:

FAQ

Can I Define My Plugin in a Separate File and Simply Import It in thewebiny.project.tsFile?

Yes, you can and that’s probably the best way to do it because the webiny.project.ts file will be easier to read.