Trigger a Netlify build from an Iphone

Problem

I set up Zapier job to listen for changes on a Notion database in order to trigger a rebuild of my blog on Netlify.

This didn't quite work. Well it worked once, and then kind of stopped. This in without a shadow of a doubt something I misconfigured. I didn't want to spend too much time trying to sort this out.

And then I remembered that ios now comes with a Shortcuts app. This seemed like the perfect oportunity to have a quick play with something new and shiny (to me at least)

Solution

Generate an endpoint in Netlify

In the Build & Deploy page in Netlify's settings page there's a section of the page for generating Build hooks.

You can create a hook for a specific branch of you site (you could trigger builds exclusively for a development branch for example), and give that hook a name. Once you click on Save, you should get a new entry that looks like https://api.netlify.com/build_hooks/someRandomGibberish .

There's a little downwards facing chevron that you can click that will show you an example cURL request to trigger the build. At this point you can copy the url for the hook that was created.

Creating a Shortcut

The Shortcut is composed of 2 parts but only does 1 task: send a POST request to the Netlify hook url.

To start, you need to create a new shortcut. You can give it a name, and you can add actions.

The first action you want to add is called URL. There's a search bar to find the actions you want. in this action you add the url of the Netlify hook.

The second action to add is called Get contents of URL. By default the GET method is selected and you can change that to a POST method. you you want or need you can also add headers and a body (the body can be used to provide a message to the build I think).

And that's it, you can add this action to your home screen and trigger a build from you phone!

Netlify hooks doumentation