Deploy a Gatsby site to an AWS S3 bucket and optionally invalidate a CloudFront distribution

• Supports Gatsby v5, v4, v3 & v2 static (SSG) sites 🚀
• Copies a Gatsby site to the root of an S3 bucket (uses sync --delete so old files in the bucket will be removed - can be disabled by using sync-delete: false, see Parameters Reference).
• Sets cache headers as defined by the rules described in the Gatsby documentation.
• Fast - uses AWS Cli commands for mass file operations which only create/modify files as needed.
• Suitable for hosting with or without CloudFront. If a CloudFront distribution is specified then it will be invalidated after deployment.

Please read the notes on the AWS Setup below.

For a full step by step guide for setting up from scratch please take a look at GitHub Actions powered Gatsby AWS how-to guide.

name: Deploy

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main # could be 'master' on older repos
jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Use Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
      - name: Build
        run: |
          npm ci
          npm run build
      - name: Configure AWS Credentials
        uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4
        with:
          aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
          aws-region: eu-west-2
      - name: Deploy
        uses: jonelantha/gatsby-s3-action@v3
        with:
          dest-s3-bucket: your_bucket

• AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID / AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY are obtained from the AWS console, see AWS IAM Secrets below.
• your_bucket should be changed to the name of your bucket
• See Parameters Reference below for the full list of parameters

Add the cloudfront-id-to-invalidate parameter to specify the ID of a distribution to be invalidated after deployment.

     - name: Deploy
        uses: jonelantha/gatsby-s3-action@v3
        with:
          dest-s3-bucket: your_bucket
          cloudfront-id-to-invalidate: CLOUDFRONTID

Add the dest-s3-path parameter to specify a sub-directory to copy to in your bucket.

     - name: Deploy
        uses: jonelantha/gatsby-s3-action@v3
        with:
          dest-s3-bucket: your_bucket
          dest-s3-path: blog/files

Gatsby builds to ./public by default. If you've changed the build directory to something else then use public-source-path to specify that directory:

     - name: Deploy
        uses: jonelantha/gatsby-s3-action@v3
        with:
          dest-s3-bucket: your_bucket
          public-source-path: ./build/

You'll need to setup an AWS IAM user with Programmatic Access and then configure the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID / AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY in the Settings/Secrets area of the repo. Ideally you should follow Amazon IAM best practices and grant least privileges to the user:

• s3:ListBucket on arn:aws:s3:::your_bucket
• s3:PutObject, s3:GetObject, s3:DeleteObject on arn:aws:s3:::your_bucket/*
• (only if you're using CloudFront) cloudfront:CreateInvalidation on arn:aws:cloudfront::YOURACCOUNT_ID:distribution/YOURCLOUDFRONTID

For a complete walkthrough of setting up the user, please see the first section of the associated Setting up Github Actions for Gatsby guide

• With CloudFront:
  • The S3 bucket does not need to be set for public access but the CloudFront distribution should have access to your bucket, see the CloudFront section below.
• Without CloudFront, S3 Static Website hosting only:
  • Use these S3 Static Website Hosting settings:
    • Index Document: index.html
    • Error Document: 404.html

Your CloudFront distribution will need read access to your S3 bucket. More information in the AWS Gatsby S3 CloudFront guide but in short this is easy to configure when you create your CloudFront distribution, just make sure you use the following settings on the Create Distribution screen:

• Origin Access Identity: Create New Identity
• Grant Read Permissions on Bucket: Yes Update Bucket Policy

Also, you'll need to setup a CloudFront Function on the CloudFront distribution to properly handle serving up index.html files. More information in the Gatsby CloudFront Function guide. Alternatively if you'd prefer to set up index handling using a lambda@edge function, please see the Gatsby CloudFront Lambda guide

If you plan to use Gatsby redirects you'll need to use a Gatsby redirect plugin such as one of the following:

• gatsby-plugin-client-side-redirect
• gatsby-plugin-meta-redirect