CI/CD with GitHub Actions — Symfony, tests and automatic deployment

What is CI/CD?

• CI (Continuous Integration) — automatic tests and code analysis on every push or pull request
• CD (Continuous Deployment) — automatic deployment to the server after all tests pass

The goal: to avoid deploying "manually over SSH on Friday at 5pm".

Basic workflow

Create the file .github/workflows/ci.yml:

name: CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [main, develop]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    services:
      postgres:
        image: postgres:16-alpine
        env:
          POSTGRES_DB:       test_db
          POSTGRES_USER:     test_user
          POSTGRES_PASSWORD: secret
        ports:
          - 5432:5432
        options: >-
          --health-cmd pg_isready
          --health-interval 10s
          --health-timeout 5s
          --health-retries 5

    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Setup PHP
        uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
        with:
          php-version: '8.3'
          extensions: pdo_pgsql, intl
          coverage: xdebug

      - name: Cache Composer
        uses: actions/cache@v4
        with:
          path: vendor
          key: composer-${{ hashFiles('composer.lock') }}

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: composer install --no-progress

      - name: Setup test database
        run: |
          php bin/console doctrine:database:create --env=test
          php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate --no-interaction --env=test

      - name: Run PHPUnit
        run: php bin/phpunit --coverage-text

      - name: Run PHPStan
        run: vendor/bin/phpstan analyse

Deployment after green tests

  deploy:
    needs: test
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'

    steps:
      - name: Deploy via SSH
        uses: appleboy/ssh-action@v1.0.0
        with:
          host:     ${{ secrets.SSH_HOST }}
          username: ${{ secrets.SSH_USER }}
          key:      ${{ secrets.SSH_PRIVATE_KEY }}
          script: |
            cd /var/www/myapp
            git pull origin main
            composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
            php bin/console cache:clear --env=prod
            php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate --no-interaction

Add the SSH_HOST, SSH_USER, SSH_PRIVATE_KEY variables in GitHub → Settings → Secrets.

Useful actions

Build statuses in the README

Add a badge to README.md:

![CI](https://github.com/USER/REPO/actions/workflows/ci.yml/badge.svg)

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