Previews enable automated deployments, triggered by pull requests and feature branches. They allow you to test changes in isolated environments before merging to your main branch. When you create a pull request, Ryvn automatically deploys your changes using blueprints, giving you a live preview of your application.

Previews help you catch issues early by providing isolated testing environments for every pull request.

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How Previews Work

Previews are automatically triggered by GitHub webhooks when pull requests are opened, updated, or closed. Ryvn will create a unique blueprint installation for the preview and allow you to stand up a single or multiple services, depending on what your blueprint contains. Each preview is destroyed after the pull request is closed or merged or if there is no new activity for 7 consecutive days.

Previews may continue to incur additional infrastructure costs if you have a large number of PRs being opened and not being closed.

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Enabling Previews

1

Configure Preview

Define previews in your ryvn.yaml file with a blueprint and target environment. Make sure the target environment supports cluster auto-scaling.

2

Create Pull Request

Push your changes to a feature branch and create a pull request.
3

Automatic Deployment

Ryvn detects the PR and automatically deploys your changes using the preview configuration.

4

Test & Review

Access your preview environment to test changes and share with reviewers.
5

Cleanup

When the PR is closed or merged, the preview environment is automatically removed.

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Using Previews

Previews are configured in your ryvn.yaml file alongside your blueprints and environments. Here’s an example of a preview configuration:

apiVersion: v1

blueprints:
  - name: frontend-blueprint
    description: "Frontend application"
    services:
      - service: frontend
        config: |
          ingress:
            annotations:
              cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: external-issuer
          className: external-nginx
          enabled: true
          hosts:
              - host: '{{.ryvn.installation.name}}.{{.ryvn.env.state.public_domain.name}}'
              paths:
                  - path: /
                  pathType: Prefix
          tls:
              - hosts:
                  - '{{.ryvn.installation.name}}.{{.ryvn.env.state.public_domain.name}}'
              secretName: '{{.ryvn.installation.name}}-tls'

      - service: backend
        config: |
          replicas: 3

previews:
  - name: "frontend-previews"
    environment: "previews"
    fromBlueprint:
      name: "frontend-blueprint"

See ryvn.yaml Preview Reference for detailed information about all the preview fields.

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Preview Configuration

Each preview requires three main components:

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Preview Properties

PropertyTypeRequiredDescription
namestringYesName of the preview. Must be lowercase alphanumeric with hyphens, max 63 characters.
environmentstringYesName of the environment where previews will be installed.
fromBlueprintobjectYesBlueprint configuration for the preview.

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Environment Selection

The environment field specifies where your preview will be deployed. This should typically be a dedicated environment for previews that is using an auto-scaling cluster.

Avoid using production environments for previews to prevent accidental exposure of untested changes and resource contention.

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Blueprint Configuration

The fromBlueprint configuration is similar to environment installations but with preview-specific inputs:

fromBlueprint:
  name: "my-app-blueprint"
  inputs:
    - name: "replica_count"
      value: 1
    - name: "debug_mode"
      value: true

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Automating URL Generation

Each preview can get a unique URL assigned if your installation uses the correct ingress configuration that generates unique URLs. See the example below:

ingress:
  annotations:
    cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: external-issuer
className: external-nginx
enabled: true
hosts:
  - host: "{{.ryvn.installation.name}}.{{.ryvn.env.state.public_domain.name}}"
    paths:
      - path: /
        pathType: Prefix
tls:
  - hosts:
      - "{{.ryvn.installation.name}}.{{.ryvn.env.state.public_domain.name}}"
    secretName: "{{.ryvn.installation.name}}-tls"

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Troubleshooting

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Common Issues