Scheduled Deploys for Netlify Builds

I want to trigger a re-deploy of my Hugo blog which is hosted on Netlify.

In the past, I’ve successfully used ifttt with a webhook.
Unfortunately, they’ve stopped supporting the webhook feature on the free tier.

What’s the solution?

Netlify has a tutorial on how to use serverless functions for automatic deploys.

Here is the concise tutorial with a few steps added which weren’t clear to me.

How to schedule deploys on Netlify using serverless functions

You’ll need Node.js on your machine.

Create a new npm project in your current directory (Hugo folder) by running npm init -y.
Install the dependencies by running the following command in your terminal:

npm install @netlify/functions
npm install node-fetch

Add the required configuration in netlify.toml:

[functions]
  node_bundler = "esbuild"

Get your build hook URL.

The name doesn’t matter much. I’ve called mine “netlify serverless function”.

Set the URL as environment variable (replace with yours, below is a placeholder example):

npx netlify-cli env:set BUILD_HOOK_URI https://api.netlify.com/build_hooks/<xxxxxxxx>

Create a file /netlify/functions/scheduled-deploy.mjs. It’s important that you choose the correct path (inside the /netlify/functions directory).

(You can choose a different location, but in that case you’ll need to configure it in netlify.toml. I didn’t want to bother with that.)

import fetch from 'node-fetch'

export default async () => {
  try {
    const BUILD_HOOK = Netlify.env.get('BUILD_HOOK_URI')
    const response = await fetch(BUILD_HOOK, {
      method: 'POST',
    })
    return new Response('Build triggered')
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Error triggering build hook:', error)
    return new Response('Error triggering build hook', {
      status: error.response?.status ? error.response.status : 500,
      statusText: error.response?.message ?? "Uh oh, this didn't work"
    })
  }
}

// Schedules the handler function to run every day at 19h UTC
export const config = {
  schedule: '0 19 * * *',
}

Check crontab.guru for a different schedule.

If you want to know more about scheduled functions, you can check the docs.

Test locally

npx netlify-cli dev

The command will start a new local server. Open your webbrowser on http://localhost:8888/.netlify/functions/serverless-deploy.

This will trigger the function and you should see that you’ve started a new deploy successfully in your Netlify dashboard.

Source control and commit

I use git and GitLab/GitHub for my blog, so I’ve commited my changes and pushed them to my repository. The remote repo is connected to Netlify. Netlify should pick up the changes automatically.

Scheduled Deploys for Netlify Builds

How to schedule deploys on Netlify using serverless functions

Further Reading