CI for NodeJS

New Issue created as per blog-posts#302 (comment 22899269)

Please, would you provide me with some background here, before we move forward?

• How familiar are you with GitLab and GitLab CI?
• Have you already made your app work? Can you give us a link to your project on GitLab.com?
• Are you currently applying CI/CD to your app? Where are you deploying to?
• What problems does your article solve? What are the advantages of using your method?
• James, how different is your .gitlab-ci.yml from the CI template?

How familiar are you with GitLab and GitLab CI?

I've used GitLab for a few side projects, and have just started using GitLab CI, having come from a professional-life TeamCity / Jenkins CI setup.

Have you already made your app work? Can you give us a link to your project on GitLab.com?

Yes, I have a NodeJS / React app currently live using the CI/CD process in a private repo.

Are you currently applying CI/CD to your app? Where are you deploying to?

I'm currently using GitLab CI to deploy the development version of the app to a publicly-accessible domain, hosted on a DigitalOcean box.

What problems does your article solve? What are the advantages of using your method?

We'll go through the setup process in simple steps - the whole process should be easy and accessible - a first pass at achieving CI/CD for NodeJS projects. I don't want to over-complicate a solution, but I will discuss variations on the deployment strategy and possibly plans for a multi-environment (dev, qa, production) deployments.

James, how different is your .gitlab-ci.yml from the CI template?

Not a great deal. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ci-yml/blob/master/Nodejs.gitlab-ci.yml is a great template, so I'm just going to be talking about customising it to fit my project and potentially mixing in other elements such as build artifacts.

If that sounds okay @marcia I'll draft an proper post outline.