# GitLab.com connections
<a name="connections-gitlab"></a>

Connections allow you to authorize and establish configurations that associate your third-party provider with your AWS resources. To associate your third-party repository as a source for your pipeline, you use a connection. 

**Note**  
Instead of creating or using an existing connection in your account, you can use a shared connection between another AWS account. See [Use a connection shared with another account](connections-shared.md).

**Note**  
This feature is not available in the Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific (Hyderabad), Asia Pacific (Jakarta), Asia Pacific (Melbourne), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Africa (Cape Town), Middle East (Bahrain), Middle East (UAE), Europe (Spain), Europe (Zurich), Israel (Tel Aviv), or AWS GovCloud (US-West) Regions. To reference other available actions, see [Product and service integrations with CodePipeline](integrations.md). For considerations with this action in the Europe (Milan) Region, see the note in [CodeStarSourceConnection for Bitbucket Cloud, GitHub, GitHub Enterprise Server, GitLab.com, and GitLab self-managed actions](action-reference-CodestarConnectionSource.md).

To add a GitLab.com source action in CodePipeline, you can choose either to: 
+ Use the CodePipeline console **Create pipeline** wizard or **Edit action** page to choose the **GitLab** provider option. See [Create a connection to GitLab.com (console)](#connections-gitlab-console) to add the action. The console helps you create a connections resource.
+ Use the CLI to add the action configuration for the `CreateSourceConnection` action with the `GitLab` provider as follows:
  + To create your connections resources, see [Create a connection to GitLab.com (CLI)](#connections-gitlab-cli) to create a connections resource with the CLI.
  + Use the `CreateSourceConnection` example action configuration in [CodeStarSourceConnection for Bitbucket Cloud, GitHub, GitHub Enterprise Server, GitLab.com, and GitLab self-managed actions](action-reference-CodestarConnectionSource.md) to add your action as shown in [Create a pipeline (CLI)](pipelines-create.md#pipelines-create-cli).

**Note**  
You can also create a connection using the Developer Tools console under **Settings**. See [Create a Connection](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dtconsole/latest/userguide/connections-create.html).

**Note**  
By authorizing this connection installation in GitLab.com, you grant our service permissions to process your data by accessing your account, and you can revoke the permissions at any time by uninstalling the application.

Before you begin:
+ You must have already created an account with GitLab.com.
**Note**  
Connections only provide access to repositories owned by the account that was used to create and authorize the connection. 
**Note**  
You can create connections to a repository where you have the **Owner** role in GitLab, and then the connection can be used with the repository with resources such as CodePipeline. For repositories in groups, you do not need to be the group owner.
+ To specify a source for your pipeline, you must have already created a repository on gitlab.com.

**Topics**
+ [

## Create a connection to GitLab.com (console)
](#connections-gitlab-console)
+ [

## Create a connection to GitLab.com (CLI)
](#connections-gitlab-cli)

## Create a connection to GitLab.com (console)
<a name="connections-gitlab-console"></a>

Use these steps to use the CodePipeline console to add a connections action for your project (repository) in GitLab.

**To create or edit your pipeline**

1. Sign in to the CodePipeline console.

1. Choose one of the following.
   + Choose to create a pipeline. Follow the steps in *Create a Pipeline* to complete the first screen and choose **Next**. On the **Source** page, under **Source Provider**, choose **GitLab**.
   + Choose to edit an existing pipeline. Choose **Edit**, and then choose **Edit stage**. Choose to add or edit your source action. On the **Edit action** page, under **Action name**, enter the name for your action. In **Action provider**, choose **GitLab**.

1. Do one of the following:
   + Under **Connection**, if you have not already created a connection to your provider, choose **Connect to GitLab**. Proceed to step 4 to create the connection.
   + Under **Connection**, if you have already created a connection to your provider, choose the connection. Proceed to step 9.
**Note**  
If you close the pop-up window before a GitLab.com connection is created, you need to refresh the page.

1. To create a connection to a GitLab.com repository, under **Select a provider**, choose **GitLab**. In **Connection name**, enter the name for the connection that you want to create. Choose **Connect to GitLab**.  
![\[Console screenshot showing connection option selected for GitLab.\]](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/latest/userguide/images/connections-create-gitlab.png)

1. When the sign-in page for GitLab.com displays, log in with your credentials, and then choose **Sign in**.

1. If this is your first time authorizing the connection, an authorization page displays with a message requesting authorization for the connection to access your GitLab.com account.

   Choose **Authorize**.  
![\[Screenshot showing the message to authorize the connection for your GitLab.com account.\]](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/latest/userguide/images/gitlab-authorization.png)

1. The browser returns to the connections console page. Under **Create GitLab connection**, the new connection is shown in **Connection name**.

1. Choose **Connect to GitLab**.

   You will be returned to the CodePipeline console.
**Note**  
After a GitLab.com connection is successfully created, a success banner will be displayed on the main window.   
 If you have not previously logged in to GitLab on the current machine, you will need to manually close the pop-up window.

1. In **Repository name**, choose the name of your project in GitLab by specifying the project path with the namespace. For example, for a group-level repository, enter the repository name in the following format: `group-name/repository-name`. For more information about the path and namespace, see the `path_with_namespace` field in [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/projects.html\$1get-single-project](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/projects.html#get-single-project). For more information about the namespace in GitLab, see [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/namespace/](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/namespace/).
**Note**  
For groups in GitLab, you must manually specify the project path with the namespace. For example, for a repository named `myrepo` in a group `mygroup`, enter the following: `mygroup/myrepo`. You can find the project path with the namespace in the URL in GitLab.

1. Under **Pipeline triggers** you can add triggers if your action is an CodeConnections action. To configure the pipeline trigger configuration and to optionally filter with triggers, see more details in [Add trigger with code push or pull request event types](pipelines-filter.md).

1. In **Branch name**, choose the branch where you want your pipeline to detect source changes.
**Note**  
If the branch name does not populate automatically, then you do not have **Owner** access to the repository. Either the project name is not valid, or the connection used doesn't have access to the project/repository.

1. In **Output artifact format**, you must choose the format for your artifacts. 
   + To store output artifacts from the GitLab.com action using the default method, choose **CodePipeline default**. The action accesses the files from the GitLab.com repository and stores the artifacts in a ZIP file in the pipeline artifact store.
   + To store a JSON file that contains a URL reference to the repository so that downstream actions can perform Git commands directly, choose **Full clone**. This option can only be used by CodeBuild downstream actions.

     If you choose this option, you will need to update the permissions for your CodeBuild project service role as shown in [Add CodeBuild GitClone permissions for connections to Bitbucket, GitHub, GitHub Enterprise Server, or GitLab.com](troubleshooting.md#codebuild-role-connections). For a tutorial that shows you how to use the **Full clone** option, see [Tutorial: Use full clone with a GitHub pipeline source](tutorials-github-gitclone.md).

1. Choose to save the source action and continue.

## Create a connection to GitLab.com (CLI)
<a name="connections-gitlab-cli"></a>

You can use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to create a connection. 

To do this, use the **create-connection** command. 

**Important**  
A connection created through the AWS CLI or AWS CloudFormation is in `PENDING` status by default. After you create a connection with the CLI or CloudFormation, use the console to edit the connection to make its status `AVAILABLE`.

**To create a connection**

1. Open a terminal (Linux, macOS, or Unix) or command prompt (Windows). Use the AWS CLI to run the **create-connection** command, specifying the `--provider-type` and `--connection-name` for your connection. In this example, the third-party provider name is `GitLab` and the specified connection name is `MyConnection`.

   ```
   aws codestar-connections create-connection --provider-type GitLab --connection-name MyConnection
   ```

   If successful, this command returns the connection ARN information similar to the following.

   ```
   {
       "ConnectionArn": "arn:aws:codestar-connections:us-west-2:account_id:connection/aEXAMPLE-8aad-4d5d-8878-dfcab0bc441f"
   }
   ```

1. Use the console to complete the connection. For more information, see [Update a pending connection](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dtconsole/latest/userguide/connections-update.html).

1. The pipeline defaults to detect changes on code push to the connection source repository. To configure the pipeline trigger configuration for manual release or for Git tags, do one of the following:
   + To configure the pipeline trigger configuration to start with a manual release only, add the following line to the configuration: 

     ```
     "DetectChanges": "false",
     ```
   + To configure the pipeline trigger configuration to filter with triggers, see more details in [Add trigger with code push or pull request event types](pipelines-filter.md). For example, the following adds to the pipeline level of the pipeline JSON definition. In this example, `release-v0` and `release-v1` are the Git tags to include, and `release-v2` is the Git tag to exclude.

     ```
     "triggers": [
                 {
                     "providerType": "CodeStarSourceConnection",
                     "gitConfiguration": {
                         "sourceActionName": "Source",
                         "push": [
                             {
                                 "tags": {
                                     "includes": [
                                         "release-v0", "release-v1"
                                     ],
                                     "excludes": [
                                         "release-v2"
                                     ]
                                 }
                             }
                         ]
                     }
                 }
             ]
     ```