Use the API to deploy from anywhere

At DeployBot we work hard to build stressless deployments into your development process. Releasing new features is exciting and we really want you to focus on your craft, not worrying about how to deploy the code when you’re done with it.

We want you to trigger deployments from anywhere, whether it is your favorite text editor, an internal continuous integration server or your programmable coffee-maker (because why not). This is why today we’re launching the DeployBot API — the best way to integrate DeployBot with anything on the Internet.

By looking at how many integrations we’ve built, you can tell that we use APIs a lot. That said, if there is one lesson we’ve learned, it’s that the best APIs are the ones that don’t get in your way. While we appreciate granular access control provided by OAuth, the transport efficiency of Thrift, and the elegance of HTTP state transitions graph, we wanted to keep the DeployBot API as simple as possible. And you won’t be surprised — we’ve built a lightweight HTTP API that employs JSON for serialization. No need for an SDK, schemas, and code generators.

Want to trigger a deployment from console? Just use curl. It is as simple as:

curl http://yoursubdomain.deploybot.com/api/v1/deployments?token=qwerty -d '{"environment_id":42}'

Want to get machine-readable information about recent deployments? Again, use curl, or even open the URL in your web browser.

http://yoursubdomain.deploybot.com/api/v1/deployments?token=qwerty

If you ever used an HTTP API before, you already know how to use ours. And even if you didn't, here is the best part: Eugene designed beautiful docs that describe every single endpoint and give you a bird’s eye view of the API features. Don’t take my word for it, go there and see for yourself.

How much can you do with the API?

We’re launching with the 5 most important resources and we will be expanding support as we go. The starting kit includes deployments, users, repositories, servers, and environments. For now, our primary focus is letting you build deployments into your tools. If you want to automate the management of your deployment infrastructure or users, that is something we will work on in the future. Remember that your feedback is crucial to where our focus is going to be, so definitely let us know if you miss a feature.

The Internet is amazing. And what makes it so, is how everything is tied together. We do our best to run your deployments smoothly, but we don’t own them. You do. The API enforces this point by giving you manual controls to your DeployBot account. To get started, go to your account settings and generate your first API token. We’re thrilled to see what you’re going to build with this!