GitHub Action for creating Pull Requests

GitHub Action that will create a pull request from the current branch.

Useful in combination with my other action devops-infra/action-commit-push.

Dockerized as devopsinfra/action-pull-request.

Features:

• Creates pull request if triggered from a current branch or any specified by source_branch to a target_branch.
• Title and body of a pull request can be specified with title and body.
• Can assign assignee, reviewer, one or more label, a milestone or mark it as a draft
• Can replace any old_string inside a pull request template with a new_string. Or put commits' subjects in place of old_string.
• When get_diff is true will add list of commits in place of <!-- Diff commits --> and list of modified files in place of <!-- Diff files --> in a pull request template.
• When allow_no_diff is set to true will continue execution and create pull request even if both branches have no differences, e.g. having only a merge commit.

Badge swag

Reference

    - name: Run the Action
      uses: devops-infra/[email protected]
      with:
        github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        source_branch: development
        target_branch: master
        title: My pull request
        template: .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md
        body: "**Automated pull request**"
        reviewer: octocat
        assignee: octocat
        label: enhancement
        milestone: My milestone
        draft: true
        old_string: "<!-- Add your description here -->"
        new_string: "** Automatic pull request**"
        get_diff: true
        ignore_users: "dependabot"
        allow_no_diff: false

Input Variable	Required	Default	Description
github_token	Yes	""	GitHub token ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
allow_no_diff	No	false	Allows to continue on merge commits with no diffs.
assignee	No	""	Assignee's usernames.
body	No	list of commits	Pull request body.
draft	No	false	Whether to mark it as a draft.
get_diff	No	false	Whether to replace predefined comments with differences between branches - see details below.
ignore_users	No	"dependabot"	List of users to ignore, coma separated.
label	No	""	Labels to apply, coma separated.
milestone	No	""	Milestone.
new_string	No	""	New string for the replacement in the template. If not specified, but old_string was, it will gather commits subjects.
old_string	No	""	Old string for the replacement in the template.
reviewer	No	""	Reviewer's username.
source_branch	No	current branch	Name of the source branch.
target_branch	No	master	Name of the target branch. Change it if you use main.
template	No	""	Template file location.
title	No	subject of the first commit	Pull request title.

Outputs	Description
url	Pull request URL
pr_number	Number of GitHub pull request

How get_diff works

In previous versions occurrences of following strings in a template result with replacing them with list of commits and list of modified files (<!-- Diff commits --> and <!-- Diff files -->).

Now this action will expect to have three types of comment blocks. Meaning anything between START and END comment will get replaced. This is especially important when updating pull request with new commits.

• <!-- Diff summary - START --> and <!-- Diff summary - END --> - show first lines of each commit the pull requests
• <!-- Diff commits - START --> and <!-- Diff commits - END --> - show graph of commits in the pull requests, with authors' info and time
• <!-- Diff files - START --> and <!-- Diff files - END --> - show list of modified files

If your template uses old comment strings it will try to adjust them in the pull request body to a new standard when pull request is created. It will not modify the template.

CAUTION Remember to not use default fetch-depth for actions/checkout action. Rather set it to 0 - see example below.

Examples

Red ares show fields that can be dynamically expanded based on commits to the current branch. Blue areas show fields that can be set in action configuration.

Create pull request for non-master branches

name: Run the Action on each commit
on:
  push:
    branches-ignore: master
jobs:
  action-pull-request:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Create pull request
        uses: devops-infra/[email protected]
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          title: Automatic pull request

Use first commit as a title and part of body, add a label based on a branch name, add git differences in the template

name: Run the Action on each commit
on:
  push:
    branches-ignore: master
jobs:
  action-pull-request:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: Run the Action
        if: startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/heads/feature')
        uses: devops-infra/[email protected]
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          title: ${{ github.event.commits[0].message }}
          assignee: ${{ github.actor }}
          label: automatic,feature
          template: .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE/FEATURE.md
          old_string: "**Write you description here**"
          new_string: ${{ github.event.commits[0].message }}
          get_diff: true