Tony Spiro
June 06, 2018
Gatsby is the new hotness for static sites, and Netlify is an amazing service that helps you deploy static sites with some brilliant automation capabilities. Combine these with the new Cosmic source plugin for Gatsby and you have a technology stack that scales well and is highly performant.
In this tutorial, I'll show you how to deploy your Gatsby Blog to Netlify and trigger automatic builds on content edits using Cosmic Webhooks.
Install the App
Check out the Gatsby Blog available on Cosmic. Install the app:
1. Create a new Bucket
2. Choose the option to start with an App
3. Install the Gatsby Blog
Deploy to Netlify
After you install the Gatsby Blog app, install the Deploy to Web Extension.
Find the Netlify option and add the Gatsby Blog GitHub URL:
https://github.com/cosmicjs/gatsby-blog-cosmicjs
Set Environment Variables
In Netlify, go to Your Netlify Site > Settings > Build and Deploy > Build environment variables. Set a COSMIC_BUCKET environment variable to your Cosmic Bucket slug. Add your COSMIC_READ_KEY (Optional) if you've set this in Your Cosmic Bucket > Settings.
Do It Live!
Your site should now be live and look like this:
Set Up Hooks
Now let's make sure to tell Netlify to rebuild our site whenever content is edited in Cosmic. To do this, first go into Netlify's deploy settings area located in Your Netlify Site > Settings > Build and Deploy > Build Hooks and add a Build Hook:
Save, then copy and paste the generated build hook URL into your Cosmic Bucket > Webhooks
This will trigger a rebuild whenever content is created, edited or deleted in Cosmic.
Now Edit Content!
Now you'll notice whenever you add / edit / remove content in your Cosmic Bucket, a magic message is sent to Netlify to tell it to rebuild your awesome Gatsby site!
In Conclusion
With Gatsby, Netlify and Cosmic, building fast, scalable and highly performant websites has never been easier. With webhooks and Netlify's built-in continuous deployment, you can enjoy an amazing automated developer experience.
Let me know if you have any questions! Reach out to me on Twitter and message me on Slack.
