{:title "YAML example" :category :getting-started :index 30 :related [["intro/basic-example" "Basic example"] ["intro/useful-example" "A more useful example"] ["intro/edn-example" "Edn example"] ["intro/json-example" "Json example"] ["jobs" "Jobs"] ["builds" "Builds"] ["artifacts" "Artifacts"]]}

Most CI/CD tools use YAML in order to configure build scripts. YAML was designed as a way to create structured information, readable to both humans and machines. And indeed it's great for simple configurations.

MonkeyCI also supports YAML out of the box, but only for simple scripts, just like EDN and JSON. These three formats are mostly interchangeable so you can use either. You can even combine them, as MonkeyCI will read all files with supported extensions in the .monkeyci/ directory.

Below is a basic build configuration for a single job, stored in .monkeyci/build.yaml:

id: echo-job
image: docker.io/alpine:latest
script:
  - 'echo "Hi there, this is a test"'

Of course, multiple jobs are also possible:

- id: test
  image: docker.io/maven:latest
  script:
    - mvn verify
  save-artifacts:
    - id: target
      path: target/

- id: publish
  image: docker.io/maven:latest
  script:
    - mvn deploy:deploy
  dependencies:
    - test
  restore-artifacts:
    - id: target
      path: target/

This build script declares two jobs: test, which runs Java unit tests using Apache Maven, and publish, which publishes the artifacts and which is dependent on the test job for the binaries exposed as artifacts in order to execute.

As stated, this is only useful for the simplest build scripts. As soon as you need conditions or you want to run action jobs, you'll need to code your scripts using Clojure. Don't forget you can also combine YAML with Clojure code!