Deployment

Application Deployment

The Tableau Workbook Extractor application is deployed in two ways:

1. As a downloadable executable: Users can easily download the latest executable version of the application from the releases page. Please note that in order to run the downloaded executable file, Graphviz must be installed on your local machine. Graphviz must be installed.

2. As a deployed Flask application on Render: This option allows users to run the application in a cloud environment without the need for local setup. The deployed application can be accessed on this link.

Both deployment methods are automated through a GitHub workflow that is triggered each time a new version tag is pushed to the repository. This ensures that the latest updates are consistently available to users.

For the Render Flask app deployment to work, the following steps are required:

1. Create a web app on Render: First, create the Flask web app on the Render platform. After creating the app, you will receive a Service ID.

2. Generate an API key: On Render, generate an API key to allow programmatic access to your app.

3. Add these secrets to GitHub: Add the Render Service ID and API key respectively as secrets RENDER_SERVICE_ID and RENDER_API_KEY to the GitHub repository for use in the workflow file.

You can view the GitHub workflow file responsible for these deployments here.

These workflows are automated versions of some of the use cases explained in the Usage page, specifically the creation of an executable file using PyInstaller (see Create and Run the Executable File) and the creation of a Dockerized Flask app (see Running the Dockerized Flask Application).

Documentation Build Process

The documentation for the Tableau Workbook Extractor is generated and deployed through a separate GitHub workflow.

This workflow is triggered for every tag push (provided that the application has been successfully deployed) to ensure that versioned documentation is maintained. Additionally, it is triggered for every commit made to the main branch, allowing for documentation updates without the need to publish a new release. This setup ensures that users always have access to the most current information while still preserving the integrity of versioned documentation.

To ensure that the documentation is built and published correctly, an orphan gh-pages branch must be available, containing an empty .nojekyll file. This file prevents GitHub Pages from processing the site with Jekyll.

The published site allows users to switch between tags and the latest version (called main), ensuring that all documentation is automatically built and readily available.