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Create an issue comment

If we take a look at the Octokit documentation on how to create issue comments we are greeted with the following method:

someFile.js

octokit.issues.createComment({
  owner,
  repo,
  issue_number,
  body
});

Okay, that doesn't seem so hard. Now that we know how to do it with Octokit let's take a look at how to use GitHub Script to create an issue comment:

my-workflow.yml

- uses: actions/[email protected]
  with:
    github-token: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
    script: |
    github.issues.createComment({
        issue_number: context.issue.number,
        owner: context.repo.owner,
        repo: context.repo.repo,
        body: '👋 Thanks for reporting!'
    })

Open a pull request

Now let's examine what it's like to open a pull request with octokit/rest.js:

someFile.js

octokit.pulls.create({
  owner,
  repo,
  title,
  head,
  base
});

Again, that's not too hard at all. Now let's do the same thing, only using the GitHub Script action:

- uses: actions/[email protected]
  with:
    github-token: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
    script: |
    github.pull.create({
        repo: github.context.repo.repo,
        owner: github.context.repo.owner,
        head: github.context.ref,
        base: "main",
        title: "from my action",
        body: "## I totally used GitHub Script to pull this off 🔥"
    })

from write-github-script.

That's not much different, so why might I want to use GitHub Script?

With GitHub Script you don't have to worry about

• Building a custom action to create this issue comment.
• No Octokit dependencies to worry about.
• No additional packages to manage.
• No need to write action metadata.
• No need to write source code to handle this Octokit method.

Using GitHub Script instead of writing custom actions for repository related tasks can prove to be a much more light-weight solution in most cases.

Anything you can do with Octokit can be accomplished with GitHub Script 🎉!

You may have noticed that when using GitHub Script the method call starts with github and not octokit. This is because GitHub Script provides you with a pre-authenticated octokit/rest.js client stored in a variable named github.

context is a reference to an object containing the context of the current workflow run

from write-github-script.

Using GitHub Script in a workflow

Actions are enabled on your repository by default, but we still have to tell our repository to use them. We do this by creating a workflow file in our repository.

If you've been following the learning path for GitHub Actions then this task is quite familiar to you.

📖 Read more about workflows

⌨️ Activity: Respond to an issue when it gets opened

1. Create a new workflow file titled .github/workflows/my-workflow.yml with the following contents:
   You can use this quicklink to easily create this file

   name: Learning GitHub Script
   
   on:
     issues:
       types: [opened]
   
   jobs:
     comment:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
         - uses: actions/[email protected]
           with:
             github-token: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
             script: |
               github.issues.createComment({
                 issue_number: context.issue.number,
                 owner: context.repo.owner,
                 repo: context.repo.repo,
                 body: "🎉 You've created this issue comment using GitHub Script!!!"
               })

2. Commit the workflow to a new branch.

3. Create a pull request. I suggest a title like Automate issue responses.

4. Supply the pull request body content and click Create pull request.

I am waiting for you to create a new pull request before moving on.

from write-github-script.