GitLab CI: Services

GitLab / 4 min read

I needed to have a Redis server available as part of the GitLab CI pipeline for this blog (simply because I wanted to use the {rredis} package). After fiddling around for some time trying to install the redis-server package using apt I discovered that GitLab CI actually provides Redis as a service, which makes the process remarkably easy.

Some details of the “standard” services (Redis, PostgreSQL and MySQL) supported by GitLab CI can be found here:

Below are simple examples of using each service.

However, as we’ll see, you are not limited to these services. You can easily specify another process as a service too.

Redis

Here’s the .gitlab-ci.yml setup. The base image is rocker/tidyverse and the latest Redis image is specified as a service.

image: rocker/tidyverse:4.0.3

services:
  - redis:latest
  
variables:
  REDIS_HOST: redis

before_script:
  - R -e "install.packages('rredis')"

test:
  script:
  - Rscript test-redis.R

Now in the test-redis.R script we connect to the service, insert a value for the key "r_version" and then retrieve that value.

library(rredis)

REDIS_HOST <- Sys.getenv("REDIS_HOST", "localhost")

redisConnect(host = REDIS_HOST)

redisSet("r_version", R.version$nickname)

redisGet("r_version")

Check out the example repository here.

PosgreSQL

What about a PosgreSQL service? Here’s the .gitlab-ci.yml setup. This time we’re using a Python base image and giving the latest PosgreSQL image as a service.

image: python:3.8.7

services:
  - postgres:latest
  
variables:
  POSTGRES_DB: db
  POSTGRES_USER: postgres
  POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password

before_script:
  - pip install psycopg2

test:
  script:
  - python test-postgres.py

In the test-postgres.py script we connect to the service, create a table, insert a couple of records and then retrieve them.

import os
import psycopg2

POSTGRES_HOST = os.environ.get('POSTGRES_HOST', 'postgres')
POSTGRES_DB = os.environ['POSTGRES_DB']
POSTGRES_USER = os.environ['POSTGRES_USER']
POSTGRES_PASSWORD = os.environ['POSTGRES_PASSWORD']

# Connect to the database.
#
db = psycopg2.connect(
  host=POSTGRES_HOST,
  database=POSTGRES_DB,
  user=POSTGRES_USER,
  password=POSTGRES_PASSWORD
)

# Create a cursor.
#
cursor = db.cursor()

# Create a table.

SQL = """
CREATE TABLE vendors (
  vendor_id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
  vendor_name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
)
"""

cursor.execute(SQL)

# Insert data.

SQL = "INSERT INTO vendors (vendor_name) VALUES (%s);"

cursor.execute(SQL, ('Red Hat',))
cursor.execute(SQL, ('Canonical',))

# Query data.

SQL = "SELECT * from vendors ORDER BY vendor_name;"

cursor.execute(SQL)

print("Number of results: ", cursor.rowcount)

row = cursor.fetchone()
#
while row is not None:
  print(row)
  row = cursor.fetchone()

# Close the cursor and the connection.
#
cursor.close()
db.close()

Check out the example repository here.

MySQL

Perhaps you need MySQL rather than PostgreSQL? Here’s the .gitlab-ci.yml setup. We’re back to the rocker/tidyverse image again.

image: rocker/tidyverse:4.0.3

services:
  - mysql:latest
  
variables:
  MYSQL_DATABASE: db
  MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: password

before_script:
  - R -e "install.packages(c('dbplyr', 'RMariaDB', 'nycflights13'))"

test:
  script:
  - Rscript test-mysql.R

In the test-mysql.R script we connect to the database service, create a table and populate it with data, then retrieve a subset of columns from the table.

library(dplyr)

MYSQL_HOST <- Sys.getenv("MYSQL_HOST", "mysql")
MYSQL_DATABASE <- Sys.getenv("MYSQL_DATABASE")
MYSQL_USER <- Sys.getenv("MYSQL_USER", "root")
MYSQL_PASSWORD <- Sys.getenv("MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD")

db <- DBI::dbConnect(
  RMariaDB::MariaDB(), 
  host = MYSQL_HOST,
  dbname = MYSQL_DATABASE,
  user = MYSQL_USER,
  password = MYSQL_PASSWORD
)

# Create a table and populate with data.
#
copy_to(
  db,
  nycflights13::flights,
  "flights",
  temporary = FALSE, 
  indexes = list(
    c("year", "month", "day"), 
    "carrier", 
    "tailnum",
    "dest"
  )
)

# Extract a subset of columns from the table.
#
tbl(db, "flights") %>% select(year:day, dep_delay, arr_delay)

DBI::dbDisconnect(db)

Check out the example repository here.

Mongo

What if you need some other service, like MongoDB? No problem: just specify the image that you need in the services section and you’re ready to roll.

Here we use the mongo:latest image to provide a MongoDB service.

image: rocker/tidyverse:4.0.3

services:
  - mongo:latest

before_script:
  - R -e "install.packages('mongolite')"

test:
  script:
  - Rscript test-mongo.R

And here’s the contents of test-mongo.R, which connects to the MongoDB service and performs some simple operations.

library(mongolite)

db <- mongo(url = "mongodb://mongo")

# Wipe existing data.
#
if(db$count() > 0) db$drop()

# Insert data.
#
db$insert(mtcars)
stopifnot(db$count() == nrow(mtcars))

# Query data.
#
cars <- db$find()
stopifnot(all.equal(cars, mtcars))

db$drop()
rm(db)

Check out the example repository here.

Conclusion

The ability to provide services makes it really easy to incorporate a database into your GitLab CI pipeline. Also, although each of the examples above has used only a single service, there’s no reason that you should not attach more than one service at the same time.