🔌 probot-actions-adapter

An adapter that takes a Probot app and makes it compatible with GitHub Actions

Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Authentication
• Caveats

Installation

npm i -S probot-actions-adapter

Usage

1. Add an action.js to your Probot project, like the one shown below
2. Add an action.yml to your Probot project, like the one shown below
3. Vendor in your node_modules, as recommended by the official Actions documentation
4. Optional, but recommended, update your project's README with an example workflow showing how to consume your action

Example action.js

// Require the adapter
const runProbot = require('probot-actions-adapter');

// Require your Probot app's entrypoint, usually this is just index.js
const app = require('./index');

// Adapt the Probot app for Actions
// This also acts as the main entrypoint for the Action
runProbot(app);

Example action.yml

name: 'Probot app name'
description: 'Probot app description.'
runs:
  using: 'node12'
  main: 'action.js'

See the documentation for action.yml syntax details.

Authentication

Authentication is via the GITHUB_TOKEN secret automatically provided by GitHub, which should be exposed as an environment variable, GITHUB_TOKEN. This can be achieved by including the appropriate env, jobs.<job_id>.env, or jobs.<job_id>.steps.env value in your workflow file.

Example via jobs.<job_id>.steps.env

Include the following in your workflow file, when calling your Probot action:

...
steps:
  - name: My probot action
    ...
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
...

Caveats

This adapter is designed to work well with Probot apps that are essentially stateless webhook handlers.

A few other limitations exist:

1. The adapter will only work for Probot apps that receive webhook events that Actions also receives: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/events-that-trigger-workflows
2. The adapter will only work for Probot apps with a permissions set that is less than, or equivalent to the permission set attached to the GITHUB_TOKEN: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/virtual-environments-for-github-hosted-runners#token-permissions

If that's you, then great! 🚀