octokit.js VS typescript-action

You can fetch different kinds of data with GitHub's API. There are two options: use the API directly or the Octokit.js library (this is the route GitHub recommends). I decided to use the API directly since the Octokit.js library included extra stuff I wouldn't need, which is an overkill for this use case.

The package @actions/github provides a hydrated Octokit.js client. Octokit.js is the SDK of GitHub and contains several subpackages like @octokit/rest and @octokit/graphql to interact with the REST or GraphQL API.

While sharing my project on Twitter, I got to know of Gregor Martynus, the maintainer of the JavaScript Octokit – GitHub's official JavaScript SDK and his project Octoherd. He tweeted a reply that it will be nice to have a GUI like Octokit-lite for Octoherd, and that sparked an inspiration for me ✨

I've also added an example using Octokit.js, GitHub's JS/TS client to the API.

In order for the project to be shipped as a service function, the node environment can not be used in any of the production code. Reviewing Probot source, one might see a dead end in that it uses require("dotenv").config(). However, its underlying framework, OctoKit does not come with any opinionated code in this regard.

Hey, I've been using Octokit in NestJS for interacting with GitHub's API and today I moved it out into a separate NPM package.

While learning about GitHub Actions, I came across the GitHub Actions Org, and they have a bunch of templates for building custom GitHub actions. So, I started searching for a template that has TypeScript support, ensuring type safety to write bug-free code. I found the typescript-action template that includes support for tests, linter, versioning, and more.

This is the template I used for my TypeScript action https://github.com/actions/typescript-action

I found the GitHub actions documentation easier to read than Azure, so I would recommend starting writing and testing your extensions on GitHub by using the official template actions/typescript-action. The mentioned template provides a good starting point; I won't repeat the steps here. Play with it, write some simple stuff, and then return here for the next steps.

GitHub maintain a set of repos called actions. One of which is called cache.

To get started quickly with a JavaScript action, I recommend using the official templates from GitHub for JavaScript and TypeScript.

On the TypeScript side, setup was much easier. There was already a template from GitHub that took care of the basics. Most of the time spent here was updating dependencies and getting my editor to play nicely with it—18 minutes, about 10% of the total.

Now that you know how to create your own GitHub Actions, why not give it a try? Head to the GitHub Marketplace and start exploring the existing Actions, or create your own and share it with the community. With GitHub Actions, the possibilities are endless, so start building and see what you can accomplish

Your build most likely fails because your tests fail. Most CI pipelines today, like Jenkins, Circleci, GitLab, TeamCity, Bamboo, and GitHub Actions, are configured to automatically cause the build process to fail when tests fail.