How to send an email from GitLab CI pipeline's job? - continuous-integration

Question

I am trying to set up a GitLab CI configuration that sends an email after a pipeline's job completes with a link of the artifacts to the upload site. The pipeline builds based upon pom.xml, then tests with sonarqube and then uploads the artifacts using curl to a specific artifactory location. The folder structure and link of the artifact directory depends upon the CI_PIPELINE_ID. After all of these succeeds, I need to send this link for downloading the artifacts to a list of people via mail. My .gitlab-config.yml looks like the following:
image: maven:3.3.9-jdk-8
variables:
MAVEN_OPTS: "-Dmaven.repo.local=.m2/repository -Dorg.slf4j.simpleLogger.log.org.apache.maven.cli.transfer.Slf4jMavenTransferListener=WARN -Dorg.slf4j.simpleLogger.showDateTime=true -Djava.awt.headless=true"
MAVEN_CLI_OPTS: "-U --batch-mode --errors --fail-at-end --show-version -DinstallAtEnd=true -DdeployAtEnd=true"
REPO_NAME: "<artifactory url>"
cache:
paths:
- .m2/repository
- ./target/
stages:
- build
compile_commit:
stage: build
only:
- cr_integrate
before_script:
- git submodule sync --recursive
- git submodule update --init --recursive --remote
script:
- mvn -f pom.xml -s settings.xml $MAVEN_CLI_OPTS clean install $MAVEN_OPTS
- curl -i -u<username>:<token> -T "target/<artifact-1>.zip" "${REPO_NAME}/${CI_PIPELINE_ID}/<artifact-1>.zip"
- curl -i -u<username>:<token> -T "target/<artifact-1>.zip" "${REPO_NAME}/${CI_PIPELINE_ID}/<artifact-2>.zip"
- - curl -i -u<username>:<token> -T "target/<artifact-1>.zip" "${REPO_NAME}/${CI_PIPELINE_ID}/<artifact-3>.zip"
tags:
- <tagname>
How do I send a mail to some people after this with the link?

Answer 1

I built a solution for this, sharing it here.
The following tools were used for this:
GitLab release api
Python-GitLab api
Docker
Microsoft Teams
Sharepoint
The process flow can be outlined as follows:
A new pipeline is triggered
After successful build, codescan and publish, a release job is run
The release job uses a python script written with the help of
python-gitlab api to create a release using gitlab release api. It
inserts external artifactory links for downloading artifacts under
release assets and adds links to release note and other documents.
GitLab sends a release mail to the appropriate notification channel,
a group email id created by Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint, so that
the entire team receives the release mail.
The python script is given below:
import os
import gitlab
from datetime import datetime
if __name__ == '__main__':
access_token = os.environ['RELEASE_TOKEN']
gitlab_url = os.environ['GITLAB_URL']
project_id = int(os.environ['CI_PROJECT_ID'])
tag_name = os.environ['CI_PIPELINE_ID']
ref = os.environ['CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME']
# artifactory_links
artifactory_link = os.environ['ARTIFACTORY_PATH']
group_name = os.environ['GROUP_NAME']
project_name = os.environ['CI_PROJECT_NAME']
directory = f'{datetime.now():%Y%m%d}'
artifact_name = os.environ['ARTIFACT_NAME']
package_type = os.environ['PACKAGE_TYPE']
# artifacts_links
artifacts_links = f'{artifactory_link}/{group_name}/{project_name}/{directory}/{artifact_name}-{tag_name}.{package_type}'
# release note
release_note = os.environ['RELEASE_NOTE']
# authenticate with gitlab
gl = gitlab.Gitlab(gitlab_url, private_token=access_token)
gl.auth()
# obtain the project object by id
project = gl.projects.get(project_id)
# creating the project tags
project.tags.create({'tag_name': tag_name, 'ref': ref})
# creating the project releases
release = project.releases.create(
{
'name': f'Release for Pipeline ID {ref}',
'tag_name': tag_name,
'description': release_note,
'assets': {
'links': [{'name': artifact_name, 'url': artifacts_links}],
}
}
)
The script requires the following environment variables:
RELEASE_TOKEN – GitLab access token
GITLAB_URL – GitLab base URL.
ARTIFACTORY_PATH – Artifactory base URL.
GROUP_NAME – In case the project is under a group.
ARTIFACT_NAME – The artifact name
PACKAGE_TYPE – Artifact package type
RELEASE_NOTE – Link to release note and any other document.
These variables can be provided as GitLab CI variables. If there are more than one artifacts, the python script can be modified accordingly.
Since the python script needs to be called during the pipeline event and adding the script in the project would be modifying the project codebase, dockerizing the script is the best solution. That way, it can be pulled directly from docker hub. The dockerfile contents for this are as follows:
FROM python:3.7-alpine
COPY release_api.py /bin
RUN pip install python-gitlab
ENTRYPOINT ["/bin/release_api.py"]
CMD ["/bin/bash"]
In order to send a release mail to every member of the team, irrespective of their individual GitLab notification and subscription preferences, a team needs to be set up using Microsoft Teams. When a team is created in Teams application, a corresponding sharepoint site is created, along with a team email id. This set up takes some time.
Once a team is created, under Files section, there’s an option to open it in sharepoint (screenshot below).
The sharepoint site has a link in the left sidebar called Conversations. Once the sharepoint site is fully ready, clicking this link will open the inbox of the Teams email.
Under the settings for the group, the option Edit Group can be found and there the group email id can be found. This group email id will be used to send the release mail to everyone in the team.
Under user settings of GitLab, the group email needs to be added. Once the mail is added and verified, the notification channel can be set up under Notifications. Once this is done, all notifications for that group (or project) will go to the group mail, and everyone in the team will get them. The last activity left is to set up notification preference to send a notification when a new release is available.

Answer 2

The gitlab script line below can be used to send email. You will need to have the ssmtp linux program which I suggest building a docker container and installing the ssmtp dependency. Personally I went with an API. What's nice about this solution is you are using core protocols and can build the email message in plain-text and don't have to worry about character escaping an API request.
image: registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-group/dev-ops/REFERENCE-TO-IMAGE-OF-DOCKERFILE-BELOW
script:
- | # Build the core smtp configuration
echo "root=noreply#emailaddress.com" > /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
echo "mailhub=EMAIL_SERVER:EMAIL_SERVER_PORT" >> /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
echo "FromLineOverride=YES" >> /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
echo "AuthUser=EMAIL_SERVER_USERNAME" >> /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
echo "AuthPass=EMAIL_SERVER_PASSWORD" >> /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
echo "UseTLS=false" >> /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
echo "Debug=YES" >> /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
- "echo 'From: from#emailaddress.com' > msg.txt" # Build the message
- echo "EMAIL SUBJECT" >> msg.txt
- echo "" >> msg.txt
- echo "EMAIL BODY" >> msg.txt
- ssmtp recipient#emailaddress.com < msg.txt # Send the email
Here's a Dockerfile that you can use to get your ssmtp dependency
FROM alpine:3.9
RUN apk add --update --no-cache \
bash=4.4.19-r1 \
ssmtp \