Starting a Build using a Webhook
Requires Production

Starting a build with a webhook offers the most flexible way of triggering Blackfire scenarios based on third-party tool events (e.g. CI/CD systems, Cloud providers...). Thereby, you can add performance tests at any point of your tool-chain.

For instance, you can:

  • Configure your tooling to trigger a new build after each deployment to the staging and/or production servers. It enables you to check your production configuration and your code's behavior on production machines, and validate the deployment.
  • Configure your continuous integration tooling to automatically test any branch you deployed on your testing environment (e.g. with a pull-request from Github). You can then decide if the code is ready to be merged.

Build Tokens allows to trigger builds using a webhook in a secure way. It is possible to generate several Build Tokens for different purposes and to enable/disable them.

You can create Build Tokens from your Environment Builds dashboard. In the left panel, click on the Create Token button:

Then give the Token a name. Note that you can also enable/disable it with the help of the Enabled checkbox.

blackfire CLI command is being installed along with the agent and provides build-trigger sub-command.

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blackfire build-trigger <ENDPOINT> --env=<ENV-UUID> --token=<TOKEN-VALUE>

Replace <ENDPOINT> with the endpoint you want to use (overrides the default endpoint you set in your environment settings), <TOKEN-VALUE> by your generated token value, and <ENV-UUID> by your environment UUID.

The command supports the following options:

--env Your Blackfire environment UUID or name (can be part of the name if it is not ambiguous)
--token Your Build Token generated value
--title The title of your build
--http-username The username for HTTP Basic authentication
--http-password The password for HTTP Basic authentication
--ip The IP for forcing DNS, if your endpoint is not in a public DNS
--ssl-no-verify Disable SSL certificates verification (this is insecure)
--external-id A unique identifier for the build; commonly, a unique reference from a 3rd party service (e.g. the full Git commit hash related to the build)
--external-parent-id The unique identifier of the parent build, to compare the current build with (e.g. the reference full Git commit hash)
--external-url A URL related to the build, like a Pull Request, or a link to your CI/CD system

You can trigger a build using a curl request:

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curl -X POST https://blackfire.io/api/v2/builds/env/<ENV-UUID>/webhook \
    --user "<TOKEN-VALUE>" \
    -d "endpoint=<ENDPOINT>" \
    -d "title=Build title"

Replace <ENV-UUID> with your environment UUID, <TOKEN-VALUE> by your generated token value, and <ENDPOINT>.

The webhook endpoint accepts the following request parameters:

user Your Build Token generated value
endpoint The endpoint to profile
title The title of your build
http_username The username for HTTP Basic authentication
http_password The password for HTTP Basic authentication
ip The IP for forcing DNS, if your endpoint is not in a public DNS
ssl_no_verify Disable SSL certificates verification (this is insecure)
external_id A unique identifier for the build; commonly, a unique reference from a 3rd party service (e.g. the Git commit sha1 related to the build)
external_parent_id The unique identifier of the parent build, to compare the current build with (e.g. the reference Git commit sha1)
external_url A URL related to the build, like a Pull Request, or a link to your CI/CD system

You can seamlessly generate your curl command using a form by clicking on the Token you want to use in your Builds dashboard. For your convenience, you can even trigger a build from there.

When using builds, it is possible to compare one build to another. This is useful when you want to validate a code merge (e.g. a pull-request) by triggering a build webhook.

Builds comparison enables you to use percent() and diff() functions in your assertions.

The comparison is always made between the current build and a reference build.

  • If the build is triggered with Blackfire CLI, the reference build is identified with the value passed to the --external-parent-id option, in the blackfire build-trigger command.

    Note that --external-id option must be set.

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    blackfire build-trigger \
        <ENDPOINT> \
        --env=<ENV-UUID> \
        --token=<TOKEN-VALUE>
        --title="Build PR 1234" \
        --external-id=<some_unique_id_for_the_build> \
        --external-parent-id=<some_unique_id_for_the_reference_build>
  • If the build is triggered with cURL, the reference build is identified with the value passed to the external_parent_id POST parameter.

    Note that external_id parameter must be set.

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    curl -X POST https://blackfire.io/api/v2/builds/env/<ENV-UUID>/webhook \
        --user "<TOKEN-VALUE>" \
        -d "<ENDPOINT>" \
        -d "title=Build PR 1234" \
        -d "external_id=<some_unique_id_for_the_current_build>"
        -d "external_parent_id=<some_unique_id_for_the_reference_build>"