A nostalgia trip with Netlify
I was recently clicking through Netlify’s API docs while trying to debug a build issue when I
noticed two fields on Netlify’s
getDeploy endpoint, permalink
and screenshot_url. In the past I have made good use of their branch deploy and deploy preview
features where your site gets a permalink that lets you visit your site at that exact snapshot.
What I didn’t realize was that it is the case for pretty much every deployment job you run on
Netlify.
This got me thinking, can I fetch all my deployments then generate some kind of timeline of versions
of this site through the years? I sure can! You can do the same by using
the listSiteDeploys
operation like so:
curl -H "User-Agent: MyApp ([email protected])" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_OAUTH2_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
https://api.netlify.com/api/v1/sites/{YOUR_SITE_ID}/deploysCheck out Netlify’s getting started
guide and the API reference docs for how to set up your access
token. A fun side-note, it seems Netlify is running partly Firebase,
as their log_access_attributes contain netlify.firebaseio.com URLs…
~170 deploys in four years
After fetching the deployment information for every one of my ~170 builds on Netlify, and combining it all into one JSON file, I started clicking through the deployment permalinks and screenshots for a bit of nostalgia.
The best place to start is often the beginning, so here is my first automated Netlify deploy from
Jan 21, 2019 at exactly 2019-01-21T22:30:33.942Z around the time I landed in Canada before I got
my first role at Points. Back my site was built on Hugo, way before I switched
to Gatsby:
Screenshots are all well and good but what makes this more interesting for me, is the fact I
can visit the site at that point using the permalink and can explore the woeful state of my
portfolio site back then!
https://5c4647fbcebc70b0c51a8fc0—jamesrwilliams.netlify.app/
I completed a bulk download of all the images and then for the few deploys that are
missing a screenshot_url for whatever reason I tasked Cypress to visit them and download a few
screenshots, but it is fair to say I’ve never been one for high quality web design:
Let me leave you with some personal highlights I’ve found so far:
| Date | Snapshot link |
|---|---|
| 2019-01-21 | Very first automated deploy |
| 2020-02-20 | Full circle, a lighter theme which looks very familiar |
| 2020-12-11 | One of the first designs I incorporated GoodReads into |
| 2021-04-06 | James tries to be super modern with some angled hero design |