---
stage: Release
group: Release
info: To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#assignments
author: Dylan Griffith
author_gitlab: DylanGriffith
type: tutorial
date: 2018-06-07
description: "Continuous Deployment of a Spring Boot application to Cloud Foundry with GitLab CI/CD"
---

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# Deploy a Spring Boot application to Cloud Foundry with GitLab CI/CD

## Introduction

This article demonstrates how to use the [Continuous Deployment](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2016/08/05/continuous-integration-delivery-and-deployment-with-gitlab/#continuous-deployment)
method to deploy a [Spring Boot](https://projects.spring.io/spring-boot/) application to
[Cloud Foundry (CF)](https://www.cloudfoundry.org/)
with GitLab CI/CD.

All the code for this project can be found in this [GitLab
repository](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-examples/spring-gitlab-cf-deploy-demo).

In case you're interested in deploying Spring Boot applications to Kubernetes
using GitLab CI/CD, read through the blog post [Continuous Delivery of a Spring Boot application with GitLab CI and Kubernetes](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2016/12/14/continuous-delivery-of-a-spring-boot-application-with-gitlab-ci-and-kubernetes/).

## Requirements

This tutorial assumes you are familiar with Java, GitLab, Cloud Foundry, and GitLab CI/CD.

To follow along, you need:

- An account on [Pivotal Web Services (PWS)](https://run.pivotal.io/) or any
  other Cloud Foundry (CF) instance.
- An account on GitLab.

NOTE:
If you're not deploying to PWS, you must replace the `api.run.pivotal.io` URL in all the below
commands with the [API URL](https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/running/cf-api-endpoint.html)
of your CF instance.

## Create your project

To create your Spring Boot application you can use the Spring template in
GitLab when creating a new project:

![New Project From Template](img/create_from_template.png)

## Configure the deployment to Cloud Foundry

To deploy to Cloud Foundry you must add a `manifest.yml` file. This
is the configuration for the CF CLI you must use to deploy the application.
Create this in the root directory of your project with the following
content:

```yaml
---
applications:
  - name: gitlab-hello-world
    random-route: true
    memory: 1G
    path: target/demo-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
```

## Configure GitLab CI/CD to deploy your application

Now you must add the GitLab CI/CD configuration file
([`.gitlab-ci.yml`](../../yaml/README.md))
to your project's root. This is how GitLab figures out what commands must run whenever
code is pushed to your repository. Add the following `.gitlab-ci.yml`
file to the root directory of the repository. GitLab detects it
automatically and runs the defined steps once you push your code:

```yaml
image: java:8

stages:
  - build
  - deploy

before_script:
  - chmod +x mvnw

build:
  stage: build
  script: ./mvnw package
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - target/demo-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

production:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - curl --location "https://cli.run.pivotal.io/stable?release=linux64-binary&source=github" | tar zx
    - ./cf login -u $CF_USERNAME -p $CF_PASSWORD -a api.run.pivotal.io
    - ./cf push
  only:
    - master
```

This uses the `java:8` [Docker image](../../docker/using_docker_images.md)
to build your application, as it provides the up-to-date Java 8 JDK on [Docker Hub](https://hub.docker.com/).
You also added the [`only` clause](../../yaml/README.md#onlyexcept-basic)
to ensure your deployments only happen when you push to the master branch.

Because the steps defined in `.gitlab-ci.yml` require credentials to sign in to
CF, you must add your CF credentials as
[environment variables](../../variables/README.md#predefined-environment-variables)
in GitLab CI/CD. To set the environment variables, navigate to your project's
**Settings > CI/CD**, and then expand **Variables**. Name the variables
`CF_USERNAME` and `CF_PASSWORD` and set them to the correct values.

![Variable Settings in GitLab](img/cloud_foundry_variables.png)

After set up, GitLab CI/CD deploys your app to CF at every push to your
repository's default branch. To review the build logs or watch your builds
running live, navigate to **CI/CD > Pipelines**.

WARNING:
It's considered best practice for security to create a separate deploy user for
your application and add its credentials to GitLab instead of using a
developer's credentials.

To start a manual deployment in GitLab go to **CI/CD > Pipelines** then click
**Run Pipeline**. After the app is finished deploying, it displays the
URL of your application in the logs for the `production` job:

```shell
requested state: started
instances: 1/1
usage: 1G x 1 instances
urls: gitlab-hello-world-undissembling-hotchpot.cfapps.io
last uploaded: Mon Nov 6 10:02:25 UTC 2017
stack: cflinuxfs2
buildpack: client-certificate-mapper=1.2.0_RELEASE container-security-provider=1.8.0_RELEASE java-buildpack=v4.5-offline-https://github.com/cloudfoundry/java-buildpack.git#ffeefb9 java-main java-opts jvmkill-agent=1.10.0_RELEASE open-jdk-like-jre=1.8.0_1...

     state     since                    cpu      memory         disk           details
#0   running   2017-11-06 09:03:22 PM   120.4%   291.9M of 1G   137.6M of 1G
```

You can then visit your deployed application (for this example,
`https://gitlab-hello-world-undissembling-hotchpot.cfapps.io/`) and you should
see the "Spring is here!" message.