FTP Deployment: smart upload via FTP

FTP deployment is a tool for automated deployment to an FTP server.

There is nothing worse than uploading web applications to FTP server manually, using such tool as Total Commander. (Although, even worse is editing files directly on the server and then trying keep some kind of synchronization ;-)

Once the process is automated, it costs you fraction of time and minimizes risk of error (didn't I forget to upload some files?). Today exists sophisticated deploying techniques, but many people are still using FTP. This tool is designed for them.

FTP Deployment is a script written in PHP (requires PHP 5.3 or never) and will automate the entire process. Just say which local folder where upload to. This information is stored in a text file deployment.ini, which you can associate with script deployment.php, so deployment will become a one click thing.

php deployment.php deployment.ini

And what file deployment.ini contains? Required is only item remote, all others are optional:

[my site] ; There may be more than one section
; remote FTP server
remote = ftp://user:[email protected]/directory

; local path (optional)
local = .

; run in test-mode? (can be enabled by option -t or --test too)
test = no

; files and directories to ignore
ignore = "
	.git*
	project.pp[jx]
	/deployment.*
	/log
	temp/*
	!temp/.htaccess
"
; is allowed to delete remote files? (defaults to yes)
allowdelete = yes

; jobs to run before file upload
before[] = http://example.com/deployment.php?before

; jobs to run after file upload
after[] = http://example.com/deployment.php?after

; directories to purge after file upload
purge[] = temp/cache

; preprocess JS and CSS files? (defaults to yes)
preprocess = yes

In test mode (with -t option) uploading or deleting files is skipped, so you can use it to verify your settings.

Item ignore uses the same format as .gitignore:

log - ignore all 'log' files or directories in all subfolders
/log - ignore 'log' file or directory in the root
app/log - ignore 'log' file or directory in the subfolder 'app'
data/* - ignore everything inside the folder 'data', but the folder will be created on FTP
!data/session - make an exception for the previous rules and do not ignore file or folder 'session'
project.pp[jx] - ignore files or folders 'project.ppj' and 'project.ppx'

Before uploading is started and after is finished you can call own scripts on server (see before and after), which may for example switch server to maintenance mode.

Syncing a large number of files attempts to run in (something like) transaction: all files are uploaded with extension .deploytmp and then are quickly renamed.

To the server is uploaded file .htdeployment with MD5 hashes of all the files and this is used for synchronization. So next time you run deployment.php, only the changed files are uploaded and deleted files are deleted on server (if it is not forbidden via directive allowdelete).

Uploaded files can be processed by preprocessor. In deployment.php there are predefined these rules: .css files are compressed using the YUI Compressor and .js minified by Google Closure Compiler. These tools are already included in the distribution, however, they require the presence of Java.

There is also rule for expanding mod_include Apache directives. For example, you can create a file combined.js:

<!--#include file="jquery.js" -->
<!--#include file="jquery.fancybox.js" -->
<!--#include file="main.js" -->

This tool will combine scripts together and minifies them via Closure Compiler and speed-up your website.

In the deployment.ini you can create multiple sections, i.e. you may have separated rules for data and for application.