Bot Defaults

🤖 defaults

A GitHub action that sets git defaults (name, email, author) for automated bot workflows from secrets or environment variables.

Also defaults GH_TOKEN to GITHUB_TOKEN if empty.

Usage

- name: 🤖 defaults
  uses: devlooped/actions-bot@v1
  with:
    # The default name of the bot account. 
    # Defaults to $GITHUB_ACTOR.
    # Set as $BOT_NAME environment variable after run, and as bot-name output.
    name: ''

    # The default email of the bot account. 
    # Defaults to [email protected].
    # Set as $BOT_EMAIL environment variable after run, and as bot-email output.
    email: ''

    # The token to set as $GH_TOKEN environment variable. If empty, 
    # uses the github_token input as a fallback.
    # Defaults to ''. Typically set to ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}.
    # Set as $GH_TOKEN and BOT_TOKEN environment variables after run, 
    # and as bot-token output.
    gh_token: ''

    # Fallback token to use for $GH_TOKEN if it's empty.
    # Defaults to ''. Typically set to ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}.
    github_token: ''

If both gh_token and github_token have empty values, the action will fail.

The additional BOT_AUTHOR environment variable is set to "$BOT_NAME <$BOT_EMAIL>" as well as the bot-author output for easy consumption.

The action also runs:

git config --global user.name $BOT_NAME
git config --global user.email $BOT_EMAIL

so that git commands can be run the resulting defaults already applied.

Example

To run the action and automatically create a PR with the resolved bot defaults:

on: 
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  includes:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: 🤖 defaults
        uses: devlooped/actions-bot@v1
        with:
          name: ${{ secrets.BOT_NAME }}
          email: ${{ secrets.BOT_EMAIL }}
          gh_token: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

      - name: 🤘 checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          token: ${{ env.GH_TOKEN }}

      # add some step that changes files

      - name: ✍ pull request
        uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v3
        with:
          base: main
          branch: bot-updates
          author: ${{ env.BOT_AUTHOR }}
          committer: ${{ env.BOT_AUTHOR }}
          commit-message: ⬆️ Bot file updates
          title: ⬆️ Bot file updates
          body: Updates made by @${{ env.BOT_NAME }}.
          token: ${{ env.GH_TOKEN }}

In a repository that doesn't define any of the custom secrets passed to the devlooped/actions-bot@v1 action, all environment variables will be properly defaulted, since at least ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} will be present, as well as the $GITHUB_ACTOR which is used to default BOT_NAME, BOT_EMAIL and BOT_AUTHOR.

It would also be possible to just run git commands from a shell and get the same defaults automatically.