Deploying a container image to AWS ECR using a GitHub Action
Published: 2022-09-29 11:01:01

---
title: Deploying a container image to AWS ECR using a GitHub Action
published: true
date: 2022-09-29 10:52:20 UTC
tags: 
canonical_url: 
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/fgs5mf5zieymakv9x7j2.png
---

In this blog post, I am going to show how you can automatically deploy a new container image to AWS ECR using a GitHub Action when there has been a merge to the main branch on GitHub.

### Prerequisite:

- Basic GitHub Action Knowledge

- AWS CLI

### Step 1: Create ECR Repository

You must use an IAM user account with Programmatic access rights to create or manage resources on AWS with AWS CLI. To do that, you need to [retrieve your access key ID and secret access key](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-sec-cred-types.html#access-keys-and-secret-access-keys) and then set the `AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID` and `AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY` environment variables as shown below.

```
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID>

export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>

```

To create a repository in the ECR from the AWS CLI On a machine that has the AWS CLI configured, enter the following to create the repository:

```
 aws ecr create-repository --repository-name name-of- repository --region name-of-region

```

For example:

```
 aws ecr create-repository --region eu-west-1 --repository-name node-repo

```

If everything goes well, you should see an output like this:

```
{
    "repository": {
        "repositoryArn": "arn:aws:ecr:eu-west-1:XXXXXXXXXX:repository/test",
        "registryId": "790783553687",
        "repositoryName": "test",
        "repositoryUri": "XXXXXXXXXX.dkr.ecr.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/test",
        "createdAt": "2022-09-28T14:01:20+01:00",
        "imageTagMutability": "MUTABLE",
        "imageScanningConfiguration": {
            "scanOnPush": false
        },
        "encryptionConfiguration": {
            "encryptionType": "AES256"
        }
    }
}

```

Note down the `repositoryName` in the output; we'll need it later in the process.

### Step 2: Add AWS Credential as Secret.

- Under your repository name, click Settings.

- In the left sidebar, click Secrets.

- Click New repository secret.

Create two new Secrets `AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID` and `AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY,` with the same credential you exported as the env variable above

![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1664380186151/KNNXnsHop.png)

### Step 3: Create your GitHub Action First Workflow

Go to the Actions tab of a GitHub repository and click the Set up this workflow button to create a workflow.

A new workflow file called main.yml will be automatically generated under the .github/workflows directory. Replace the populated content with below.

```
   name: "Build and push to ECR"
on:
  push:
    branches:
    - master
  pull_request:
jobs:
  BuildAndPushImageToECR:
    name: "Build and Push to ECR"
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Configure AWS Credentials
        uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v1
        with:
          aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
          aws-region: eu-west-1 // region you want to push the image to

      - name: Login to Amazon ECR
        id: login-ecr
        uses: aws-actions/amazon-ecr-login@v1

      - name: Build, tag, and push image to Amazon ECR 🏷
        id: build-image
        env:
          ECR_REGISTRY: ${{ steps.login-ecr.outputs.registry }}
          ECR_REPOSITORY: "your-ecr-repo-name"
          IMAGE_TAG: v1
        run: |
          docker build -t $ECR_REGISTRY/$ECR_REPOSITORY:$IMAGE_TAG .
          docker push $ECR_REGISTRY/$ECR_REPOSITORY:$IMAGE_TAG
          echo "::set-output name=image::$ECR_REGISTRY/$ECR_REPOSITORY:$IMAGE_TAG"

```

Replace the `ECR_REPOSITORY` with the name of the repository you created earlier.

![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1664383283373/YHAPpJy9y.png)

Congratulations! We have successfully created a GitHub that builds and pushes container images to AWS ECR on every pull request to the main branch.

Until next time, 🖤