Deployments

Use the REST API to create and delete deployments and deployment environments.

About deployments

Deployments are requests to deploy a specific ref (branch, SHA, tag). GitHub dispatches a deployment event that external services can listen for and act on when new deployments are created. Deployments enable developers and organizations to build loosely coupled tooling around deployments, without having to worry about the implementation details of delivering different types of applications (e.g., web, native).

Deployment statuses allow external services to mark deployments with an error, failure, pending, in_progress, queued, or success state that systems listening to deployment_status events can consume.

Deployment statuses can also include an optional description and log_url, which are highly recommended because they make deployment statuses more useful. The log_url is the full URL to the deployment output, and the description is a high-level summary of what happened with the deployment.

GitHub dispatches deployment and deployment_status events when new deployments and deployment statuses are created. These events allow third-party integrations to receive and respond to deployment requests, and update the status of a deployment as progress is made.

Below is a simple sequence diagram for how these interactions would work.

+---------+             +--------+            +-----------+        +-------------+
| Tooling |             | GitHub |            | 3rd Party |        | Your Server |
+---------+             +--------+            +-----------+        +-------------+
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |  Create Deployment   |                       |                     |
     |--------------------->|                       |                     |
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |  Deployment Created  |                       |                     |
     |<---------------------|                       |                     |
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |                      |   Deployment Event    |                     |
     |                      |---------------------->|                     |
     |                      |                       |     SSH+Deploys     |
     |                      |                       |-------------------->|
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |                      |   Deployment Status   |                     |
     |                      |<----------------------|                     |
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |                      |                       |   Deploy Completed  |
     |                      |                       |<--------------------|
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |                      |   Deployment Status   |                     |
     |                      |<----------------------|                     |
     |                      |                       |                     |

Keep in mind that GitHub is never actually accessing your servers. It's up to your third-party integration to interact with deployment events. Multiple systems can listen for deployment events, and it's up to each of those systems to decide whether they're responsible for pushing the code out to your servers, building native code, etc.

Note that the repo_deployment OAuth scope grants targeted access to deployments and deployment statuses without granting access to repository code, while the public_repo andrepo scopes grant permission to code as well.

Inactive deployments

When you set the state of a deployment to success, then all prior non-transient, non-production environment deployments in the same repository with the same environment name will become inactive. To avoid this, you can set auto_inactive to false when creating the deployment status.

You can communicate that a transient environment no longer exists by setting its state to inactive. Setting the state to inactive shows the deployment as destroyed in GitHub and removes access to it.

List deployments

Works with GitHub Apps

Simple filtering of deployments is available via query parameters:

Parameters for "List deployments"

Headers
Name, Type, Description
`accept` string Setting to `application/vnd.github+json` is recommended.

Path parameters
Name, Type, Description
`owner` string Required The account owner of the repository. The name is not case sensitive.
`repo` string Required The name of the repository without the `.git` extension. The name is not case sensitive.

Query parameters
Name, Type, Description
`sha` string The SHA recorded at creation time. Default: `none`
`ref` string The name of the ref. This can be a branch, tag, or SHA. Default: `none`
`task` string The name of the task for the deployment (e.g., `deploy` or `deploy:migrations`). Default: `none`
`environment` string or null The name of the environment that was deployed to (e.g., `staging` or `production`). Default: `none`
`per_page` integer The number of results per page (max 100). Default: `30`
`page` integer Page number of the results to fetch. Default: `1`

HTTP response status codes for "List deployments"

Status code	Description
`200`	OK

Code samples for "List deployments"

get/repos/{owner}/{repo}/deployments

curl -L \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-TOKEN>" \
  http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/repos/OWNER/REPO/deployments

Response

Status: 200

[
  {
    "url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example/deployments/1",
    "id": 1,
    "node_id": "MDEwOkRlcGxveW1lbnQx",
    "sha": "a84d88e7554fc1fa21bcbc4efae3c782a70d2b9d",
    "ref": "topic-branch",
    "task": "deploy",
    "payload": {},
    "original_environment": "staging",
    "environment": "production",
    "description": "Deploy request from hubot",
    "creator": {
      "login": "octocat",
      "id": 1,
      "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
      "avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
      "gravatar_id": "",
      "url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat",
      "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
      "followers_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/followers",
      "following_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
      "gists_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
      "starred_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
      "subscriptions_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/subscriptions",
      "organizations_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/orgs",
      "repos_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/repos",
      "events_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
      "received_events_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/received_events",
      "type": "User",
      "site_admin": false
    },
    "created_at": "2012-07-20T01:19:13Z",
    "updated_at": "2012-07-20T01:19:13Z",
    "statuses_url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example/deployments/1/statuses",
    "repository_url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example",
    "transient_environment": false,
    "production_environment": true
  }
]

Create a deployment

Works with GitHub Apps

Deployments offer a few configurable parameters with certain defaults.

The ref parameter can be any named branch, tag, or SHA. At GitHub Enterprise Server we often deploy branches and verify them before we merge a pull request.

The environment parameter allows deployments to be issued to different runtime environments. Teams often have multiple environments for verifying their applications, such as production, staging, and qa. This parameter makes it easier to track which environments have requested deployments. The default environment is production.

The auto_merge parameter is used to ensure that the requested ref is not behind the repository's default branch. If the ref is behind the default branch for the repository, we will attempt to merge it for you. If the merge succeeds, the API will return a successful merge commit. If merge conflicts prevent the merge from succeeding, the API will return a failure response.

By default, commit statuses for every submitted context must be in a success state. The required_contexts parameter allows you to specify a subset of contexts that must be success, or to specify contexts that have not yet been submitted. You are not required to use commit statuses to deploy. If you do not require any contexts or create any commit statuses, the deployment will always succeed.

The payload parameter is available for any extra information that a deployment system might need. It is a JSON text field that will be passed on when a deployment event is dispatched.

The task parameter is used by the deployment system to allow different execution paths. In the web world this might be deploy:migrations to run schema changes on the system. In the compiled world this could be a flag to compile an application with debugging enabled.

Users with repo or repo_deployment scopes can create a deployment for a given ref.

Merged branch response:

You will see this response when GitHub automatically merges the base branch into the topic branch instead of creating a deployment. This auto-merge happens when:

Auto-merge option is enabled in the repository
Topic branch does not include the latest changes on the base branch, which is master in the response example
There are no merge conflicts

If there are no new commits in the base branch, a new request to create a deployment should give a successful response.

Merge conflict response:

This error happens when the auto_merge option is enabled and when the default branch (in this case master), can't be merged into the branch that's being deployed (in this case topic-branch), due to merge conflicts.

Failed commit status checks:

This error happens when the required_contexts parameter indicates that one or more contexts need to have a success status for the commit to be deployed, but one or more of the required contexts do not have a state of success.

Parameters for "Create a deployment"

Headers
Name, Type, Description
`accept` string Setting to `application/vnd.github+json` is recommended.

Path parameters
Name, Type, Description
`owner` string Required The account owner of the repository. The name is not case sensitive.
`repo` string Required The name of the repository without the `.git` extension. The name is not case sensitive.

Body parameters
Name, Type, Description
`ref` string Required The ref to deploy. This can be a branch, tag, or SHA.
`task` string Specifies a task to execute (e.g., `deploy` or `deploy:migrations`). Default: `deploy`
`auto_merge` boolean Attempts to automatically merge the default branch into the requested ref, if it's behind the default branch. Default: `true`
`required_contexts` array of strings The status contexts to verify against commit status checks. If you omit this parameter, GitHub verifies all unique contexts before creating a deployment. To bypass checking entirely, pass an empty array. Defaults to all unique contexts.
`payload` object or string JSON payload with extra information about the deployment.
`environment` string Name for the target deployment environment (e.g., `production`, `staging`, `qa`). Default: `production`
`description` string or null Short description of the deployment. Default: `""`
`transient_environment` boolean Specifies if the given environment is specific to the deployment and will no longer exist at some point in the future. Default: `false` Default: `false`
`production_environment` boolean Specifies if the given environment is one that end-users directly interact with. Default: `true` when `environment` is `production` and `false` otherwise.

HTTP response status codes for "Create a deployment"

Status code	Description
`201`	Created
`202`	Merged branch response
`409`	Conflict when there is a merge conflict or the commit's status checks failed
`422`	Validation failed, or the endpoint has been spammed.

Code samples for "Create a deployment"

post/repos/{owner}/{repo}/deployments

curl -L \
  -X POST \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-TOKEN>" \
  http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/repos/OWNER/REPO/deployments \
  -d '{"ref":"topic-branch","payload":"{ \"deploy\": \"migrate\" }","description":"Deploy request from hubot"}'

Simple example

Status: 201

{
  "url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example/deployments/1",
  "id": 1,
  "node_id": "MDEwOkRlcGxveW1lbnQx",
  "sha": "a84d88e7554fc1fa21bcbc4efae3c782a70d2b9d",
  "ref": "topic-branch",
  "task": "deploy",
  "payload": {},
  "original_environment": "staging",
  "environment": "production",
  "description": "Deploy request from hubot",
  "creator": {
    "login": "octocat",
    "id": 1,
    "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
    "avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
    "gravatar_id": "",
    "url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat",
    "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
    "followers_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/followers",
    "following_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
    "gists_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
    "starred_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
    "subscriptions_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/subscriptions",
    "organizations_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/orgs",
    "repos_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/repos",
    "events_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
    "received_events_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/received_events",
    "type": "User",
    "site_admin": false
  },
  "created_at": "2012-07-20T01:19:13Z",
  "updated_at": "2012-07-20T01:19:13Z",
  "statuses_url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example/deployments/1/statuses",
  "repository_url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example",
  "transient_environment": false,
  "production_environment": true
}

Get a deployment

Works with GitHub Apps

Parameters for "Get a deployment"

Headers
Name, Type, Description
`accept` string Setting to `application/vnd.github+json` is recommended.

Path parameters
Name, Type, Description
`owner` string Required The account owner of the repository. The name is not case sensitive.
`repo` string Required The name of the repository without the `.git` extension. The name is not case sensitive.
`deployment_id` integer Required deployment_id parameter

HTTP response status codes for "Get a deployment"

Status code	Description
`200`	OK
`404`	Resource not found

Code samples for "Get a deployment"

get/repos/{owner}/{repo}/deployments/{deployment_id}

curl -L \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-TOKEN>" \
  http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/repos/OWNER/REPO/deployments/DEPLOYMENT_ID

Response

Status: 200

{
  "url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example/deployments/1",
  "id": 1,
  "node_id": "MDEwOkRlcGxveW1lbnQx",
  "sha": "a84d88e7554fc1fa21bcbc4efae3c782a70d2b9d",
  "ref": "topic-branch",
  "task": "deploy",
  "payload": {},
  "original_environment": "staging",
  "environment": "production",
  "description": "Deploy request from hubot",
  "creator": {
    "login": "octocat",
    "id": 1,
    "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
    "avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
    "gravatar_id": "",
    "url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat",
    "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
    "followers_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/followers",
    "following_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
    "gists_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
    "starred_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
    "subscriptions_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/subscriptions",
    "organizations_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/orgs",
    "repos_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/repos",
    "events_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
    "received_events_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/received_events",
    "type": "User",
    "site_admin": false
  },
  "created_at": "2012-07-20T01:19:13Z",
  "updated_at": "2012-07-20T01:19:13Z",
  "statuses_url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example/deployments/1/statuses",
  "repository_url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example",
  "transient_environment": false,
  "production_environment": true
}

Delete a deployment

Works with GitHub Apps

If the repository only has one deployment, you can delete the deployment regardless of its status. If the repository has more than one deployment, you can only delete inactive deployments. This ensures that repositories with multiple deployments will always have an active deployment. Anyone with repo or repo_deployment scopes can delete a deployment.

To set a deployment as inactive, you must:

Create a new deployment that is active so that the system has a record of the current state, then delete the previously active deployment.
Mark the active deployment as inactive by adding any non-successful deployment status.

For more information, see "Create a deployment" and "Create a deployment status."

Parameters for "Delete a deployment"

Headers
Name, Type, Description
`accept` string Setting to `application/vnd.github+json` is recommended.

Path parameters
Name, Type, Description
`owner` string Required The account owner of the repository. The name is not case sensitive.
`repo` string Required The name of the repository without the `.git` extension. The name is not case sensitive.
`deployment_id` integer Required deployment_id parameter

HTTP response status codes for "Delete a deployment"

Status code	Description
`204`	No Content
`404`	Resource not found
`422`	Validation failed, or the endpoint has been spammed.

Code samples for "Delete a deployment"

delete/repos/{owner}/{repo}/deployments/{deployment_id}

curl -L \
  -X DELETE \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-TOKEN>" \
  http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/repos/OWNER/REPO/deployments/DEPLOYMENT_ID

Response

Status: 204