How to run build on CircleCI recurrently

To run CircleCI build nightly (or at any interval we want), we need a couple of things. First we need to get CircleCI token that will allow us to access CircleCI API.

Next we need a script, that will trigger the build. In example below we also provide an extra build parameter RUN_ALL_TESTS that effectively allows us to conditionally run some specs we do not want to run during regular build.

namespace :ci do
  desc 'Runs build on CircleCI'
  task build: :environment do
    command = 'curl -X POST --header "Content-Type: application/json" ' \
      "--data '{\"build_parameters\": {\"RUN_ALL_TESTS\": \"true\"}}' " \
      'https://circleci.com/api/v1.1/project/github/SomeOwner/' \
      "some_project/tree/master\?circle-token\=#{ENV.fetch('CIRCLE_CI_TOKEN')}"

    `#{command}`
  end
end

Last thing is to schedule the build. Simplest way is to use Heroku Scheduler and just configure it to run rake ci:build command.

Edit: No longer valid! For Circle 2.0 we can use workflows for the same effect!

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