GitHub Action - Pull Request API

This GitHub Action (written in JavaScript) wraps the GitHub Pull Requests API, specifically the Create a Pull Request endpoint, to allow you to leverage GitHub Actions to create pull requests.

Builds and Deployment

Usage

Pre-requisites

Create a workflow .yml file in your .github/workflows directory. An example workflow is available below. For more information, reference the GitHub Help Documentation for Creating a workflow file.

Inputs

For more information on these inputs, see the API Documentation

from: The name of the source branch to merge from
to: The name of the destination branch to merge to
title: The pull request title
body: The pull request body

Outputs

For more information on these outputs, see the API Documentation for an example of what these outputs look like

id: The pull request ID
url: The URL users can navigate to in order to view the pull request

Example workflow - create a pull request when a release is created

On every published release, create a pull request from dev to master:

name: On Release Published
on:
  release:
    types: [published]
jobs:
  build:
    name: Create Pull Request
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Project
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Create PR
        id: create_pr
        uses: ./.github/actions/create-pull-request
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # This token is provided by Actions, you do not need to create your own token
        with:
          from: 'master'
          to: 'dev'
          title: 'Merge Master to Dev Post-release'
          body: 'This is an auto-generated pull request created by the GitHub action "create-pull-request", which is contained in the .github folder of this project.'

This will create a new pull request This uses the GITHUB_TOKEN provided by the virtual environment, so no new token is needed.

Making Changes to the Code

Install the dependencies

$ npm install

Change action.yml

The action.yml contains defines the inputs and output for your action.

Update the action.yml with your name, description, inputs and outputs for your action.

See the documentation

Change the Code

Most toolkit and CI/CD operations involve async operations so the action is run in an async function.

const core = require('@actions/core');
...

async function run() {
  try { 
      ...
  } 
  catch (error) {
    core.setFailed(error.message);
  }
}

run()

See the toolkit documentation for the various packages.

Package for distribution

GitHub Actions will run the entry point from the action.yml. Packaging assembles the code into one file that can be checked in to Git, enabling fast and reliable execution and preventing the need to check in node_modules.

Actions are run from GitHub repos. Packaging the action will create a packaged action in the dist folder.

Run package

npm run package

Since the packaged index.js is run from the dist folder.

git add dist

notthemonkee/create-pull-request