• Learning Github Actions
  • Concepts
  • Steps followed in order to create a simple WorkFlow
  • Comment on new issues
  • Steps followed as below
    • Fetching details of the Issue
    • Adding a Comment to the Issue created
    • Commenting with an API
  • This completes the 1st part of the learning and you will have linked files for next steps
    • Adding Self Hosted Gateway - Adding an Action to Self-hosted Runner for GitHub Enterprise with no access to community Github
    • CI with Actions - CI with Actions
    • IAC - IAC Aws Concepts
    • CD - Continous Deployment
    • SelfHosted Runners Tool Cache - link
    • SelfHosted Runner - Enterprise Setup

Learning Github Actions

This is a beginner course on Github actions. I am creating this as a newbee who is also learning. Following this Repository will help you learn GitHub Actions as I learn too.

Concepts

• Event - A triger that will kick of a Github Action.It could be a Pull Request, Push to a branch , Issue created, Closed or any thing else that you can imagine as a trigger
• WorkFlow - This fines the task that will be run or an action done based on the trigger
  • All workflows exist within a repository (As of the time of recording)
  • Jobs - this is within a workflow and runs parallel by default with other jobs in the workflow
    • Steps - These are steps done inside a Job and all steps inside a job is done sequentially by default.
• Runners - This is the host on which the job runns
  • GitHub Runners
    • Ubuntu
    • Windows
    • Mac
  • Self Hosted Runners
    • Built and customized by you

Steps followed in order to create a simple WorkFlow

• Install the GH CLI

• Create a repo gh repo create KiranChilledOut/LearningGithubActions --public

• Clone the repo gh repo clone kiranChilledOut/LearningGitHubActions

• In order to have workflow we need a .github folder in the repository - New-Item -Type Directory -Name '.github'

• cd into the folder and great a new folder workflows - cd .\.github\ and New-Item -Type Directory -Name 'workflows'

• cd into the workflow folder and create files hello_world.yaml - cd .\workflows\ and New-Item -Type File -Name 'hello_world.yaml'

• Edit the workflow file with vsCode and add a 1st line the defines the workflow name

  • name: Hello World workflow

• Next specify a trigger

    on:
      push:
        branches:
          - main
        pull_request:
          - main
        workflow_dispatch:

  • on - Keyword for the trigger
  • push - trigger action
    • branches - action entity
  • In short it says whenever there is a push action on the main branch or a pull request on the main branch or a manual trigger on the workflow
  • All Triggers Documentation

• Next specify a Job

  jobs:
      hello:
          runs-on: windows-latest
          steps:
              - uses: actions/checkout@v4
              - name: hello world
                run: write-host "hello World"
                shell: powershell
      
      goodbye:
          runs-on: windows-latest
          steps:
              - name: goodbye world
                run: write-host "goodbye World"
                shell: powershell

  • jobs - Specifies the actions based on the trigger.Here the jobs are hello and goodbye
  • runs-on - Specifies the host/runner the job runs on.
  • uses: actions/checkout@v4 - this is used to use a community or a self created action. Click to know more about actions/checkout

• Commit and push you code and go to the GitHub Repository in Browser

• You will see in Actions tab of your repository the workflow you created

Comment on new issues

• We will be using github community action
• Context in order for the github actions to comment on an issue it needs to know some information like issue id etc. This is called Context
• Before proceeding please check if you actions have the write permissions given to it
  • Settings -> Actions -> General -> Read and write permissions

Steps followed as below

Fetching details of the Issue

• Create a new file issue_comment.yaml

• Add the below code

    name: Create a comment on new issues
    on:
        issues:
            types: [opened]
  
    jobs:
        comment-with-action:
            runs-on: windows-latest
            steps:
                - name: "dump github context"
                  run: |
                    $json = '${{toJson(github.event)}}'
                    Write-Output $json
                  shell: pwsh 
  

  • Commit the above code and go the Github Browser and create a new issue.
  • You will notice that it triggers the above workflow and you will see all the content of the issue because that is what the context using github.event was used to trigger this workflow.
  • Go through the output and you will see a key called number which is the issue number
  • Now that we understood how the issue can be used as trigger lets add a comment when an issue is created.

Adding a Comment to the Issue created

• Add the below step in the file issue_comment.yaml created in the above step

    - name: Create comment
      uses: peter-evans/create-or-update-comment@v4
      with:
        issue-number: ${{github.event.issue.number}}
        body: |
                  This is a multi-line test comment
          - With GitHub **Markdown** :sparkles:
          - Created by [create-or-update-comment][1]
      
          [1]: https://github.com/peter-evans/create-or-update-comment
        reactions: '+1'

  • Notice ${{github.event.issue.number}} is just the json tree output we saw in previous step.

• Commit changes and push the code.

• Create a new issue and you will see the Github Actions commenting on it. This is so cool . Ain't it ? 😜 Next let us create the same commenting with an API

Commenting with an API

• Added the job for ubuntu and windows runners to the file issue_comment.yaml created in the above step
• Note the way you need to interact with Ubuntu and Windows Runner is different.
• Now create and issue and watch the action.
• To get a list of API and actions

This completes the 1st part of the learning and you will have linked files for next steps

Adding Self Hosted Gateway - Adding an Action to Self-hosted Runner for GitHub Enterprise with no access to community Github

CI with Actions - CI with Actions

IAC - IAC Aws Concepts

CD - Continous Deployment

SelfHosted Runners Tool Cache - link

SelfHosted Runner - Enterprise Setup