Netlify Plugin: Onboarding Assistant

This plugin checks for missing environment variables and deploys a helper page that walks the user through configuring their site.

Installation

In the repo that you want people to deploy to Netlify, add the plugin and template environment variables to the netlify.toml:

[[plugins]]
  package = "netlify-plugin-onboarding"

[template.environment]
  SOME_ENV_VAR = "Describe what this is/why it’s needed."
  # For example, if you need a GitHub username:
  GITHUB_USERNAME = "Your GitHub Username (e.g. @jlengstorf)"

Configuration

All of these configuration options are optional.

Name	Description	Default Value	Required
templateRepository	The Git repository that contains your onboarding instructions.	"https://github.com/jlengstorf/example-onboarding-flow.git"	true
messageHeading	If env vars are missing, this is the report headline.	"Missing Required Environment Variables"	true
messageSummary	If env vars are missing, this is the report summary.	"Missing env vars: {{env_vars}}"	true
messageDetails	If env vars are missing, this is the report details.	"A temporary homepage has been created with instructions for completing the site setup. Visit {{site_url}} for details."	true

Custom instruction templates

You can create your own instruction template. In order to work properly, two things need to be true:

1. It MUST use a build command that is triggered with npm run build. If you don’t use a build command, add one that does nothing (e.g. "build": "# no build command")
2. It MUST create a file at dist/index.html.

It’s possible to create additional pages in addition to index.html, but that’s not required.

Don’t build if the site is missing env vars

Because there’s no way to prevent a build from a build plugin without failing the whole build, the site itself needs to skip building if the env vars are missing.

Here’s an example script that checks the netlify.toml for required env vars, then skips the build if they’re not present.

const fs = require('fs');
const toml = require('toml');
const execa = require('execa');

const tomlFile = fs.readFileSync(`${__dirname}/netlify.toml`, 'utf8');
const netlifyConfig = toml.parse(tomlFile);
const requiredEnvVars = Object.keys(netlifyConfig.template.environment);

// if we’re missing the required env vars, we need to
// no-op to avoid a failed build and show the install
// helper page.
if (!requiredEnvVars.every((envVar) => process.env.hasOwnProperty(envVar))) {
  console.log('skipping the build due to missing env vars');
  return;
}

// if we get here, build the site
execa('npm', ['run', 'build']).stdout.pipe(process.stdout);

You can save this as maybe-build.js, then create a maybe-build command in your package.json:

  "scripts": {
    "maybe-build": "node maybe-build.js",
    "build": "eleventy --input src --output public"
  },

Set this as your command in netlify.toml:

[build]
  command = "npm run maybe-build"