Scheduled Deployments for Netlify using Github Actions

I am working on a Gatsby site which sources my weight data from a google spreadsheet to generate a site which shows my weight trend. The spreadsheet is updated every morning, typically at 06:00, where I record my weight.

Netlify does not automatically build and deploy when the spreadsheet is updated, since Netlify does not know that the spreadsheet is updated. The simplest approach is to schedule a build and deployment of the Gatsby site every day, such that new weight data is automatically sourced, deployed and thus made public.

Netlify does not provide any means to schedule deployments. As far as I can see, Netlify only supports git push triggering and build hooks. Build hooks are an unique URL triggered by, e.g. Curl, starting a new build & deploy.

This hook can be called in a schedule manner, thus enforcing a scheduling of the build and deployment in Netlify.

The simplest approach I have found is to use Github actions to invoke the build hook with Curl. The following action calls the web hook every day at 8:00 UTC.

name: Every day

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 8 * * *"
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - name: POST hook
      run: curl -X POST -d {} https://api.netlify.com/build_hooks/{UNIQUE_HOOK_ID}

With this in place, Github will trigger a build & deploy in Netlify without requiring any push to the repository.