Publish CDN assets in CI/CD pipelines

Build your app, publish assets to Smooth CDN from CI/CD, and keep release workflows repeatable across systems like GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, and Jenkins.

The problem

Teams often automate application deployments but still handle static assets as a separate, inconsistent step. That creates mismatches between builds, releases, and the files users actually load in production.

Without a CDN publish step inside CI/CD, asset delivery becomes part manual process, part custom scripting, and part tribal knowledge.

Manual uploads after deploy

Assets out of sync with builds

Different scripts in every project

No repeatable release step

Harder deployment discipline

CDN adoption handled separately

Solution

Smooth CDN turns asset publishing into a standard CI/CD step. Keep the same config in your repository, authenticate with a token, and define the publish flow directly inside your deployment config.

Authenticate the pipeline

CI/CD should use a non-interactive token instead of manual login. Smooth CDN CLI reads the SCDN_TOKEN environment variable, so the same workflow can run on every build.

export SCDN_TOKEN="your_api_token"

Keep asset config in the repository

Store your Smooth CDN project config next to the app code so builds and releases always know what should be published. This keeps the asset publishing flow stored directly with the project.

Example .scdn.json file

{
  "project": "My App Assets",
  "projectSlug": "my-app-assets",
  "sources": [
    "./dist/**/*.{js,css}",
    "./public/**/*.{png,jpg,svg,webp,json,mp4,mov,webm,pdf}"
  ],
  "replacePath": {
    "/dist/": "/",
    "/public/": "/"
  },
  "excludes": [
    "./dist/tmp/*"
  ]
}

Set up deployment config

The publish step can be expressed in the native config of whichever CI/CD system your team already uses. Below are examples for three common options, each including build and publish commands in the same deployment flow.

Example GitHub Actions workflow

name: Publish assets to Smooth CDN

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  publish-assets:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Setup Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
          cache: "npm"

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci

      - name: Build assets
        run: npm run build

      - name: Install Smooth CDN CLI
        run: npm install -g @smoothcdn/cli

      - name: Publish assets
        env:
          SCDN_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.SCDN_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          scdn push

Example Azure Pipelines config

trigger:
  branches:
    include:
      - main

pool:
  vmImage: ubuntu-latest

steps:
  - task: NodeTool@0
    inputs:
      versionSpec: '20.x'

  - script: npm ci
    displayName: Install dependencies

  - script: npm run build
    displayName: Build assets

  - script: npm install -g @smoothcdn/cli
    displayName: Install Smooth CDN CLI

  - script: |
      scdn push
    displayName: Publish assets to Smooth CDN
    env:
      SCDN_TOKEN: $(SCDN_TOKEN)

Example Jenkins pipeline

pipeline {
  agent any

  environment {
    SCDN_TOKEN = credentials('scdn-token')
  }

  stages {
    stage('Install') {
      steps {
        sh 'npm ci'
        sh 'npm install -g @smoothcdn/cli'
      }
    }

    stage('Build') {
      steps {
        sh 'npm run build'
      }
    }

    stage('Publish assets') {
      steps {
        sh '''
          scdn push
        '''
      }
    }
  }
}

What You get

A repeatable asset publishing step that fits naturally into release pipelines instead of sitting next to them as a manual extra task.

Same asset flow on every release

No manual uploads after deploy

Better separation between app deploy and asset delivery

Cleaner publishing workflow

Cleaner deployment and release discipline

Easy CI/CD adoption with one CLI

Make asset publishing part of every deployment

Add a simple CDN publish step to your CI/CD workflow and keep asset releases consistent.

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