add-pr-comment

A GitHub Action which adds a comment to a pull request's issue.

Features

• Fast, runs in the GitHub Actions node.js runtime; no Docker pull needed.
• Modify issues for PRs merged to master.
• Multiple posts of the same comment optionally allowable.
• Supports emoji 😂😂😂!
• Supports a proxy for fork-based PRs. See below.

Usage

on:
  pull_request:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: mshick/add-pr-comment@v1
        with:
          message: |
            **Hello**
            🌏
            !
          repo-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          repo-token-user-login: 'github-actions[bot]' # The user.login for temporary GitHub tokens
          allow-repeats: false # This is the default

You can even use it on PR Issues that are related to PRs that were merged into master, for example:

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: mshick/add-pr-comment@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          message: |
            **Hello MASTER**
          allow-repeats: true

Configuration options

Variable or Argument	Location	Description	Required	Default
message	with	The message you'd like displayed, supports Markdown and all valid Unicode characters	yes
repo-token	with	A valid GitHub token, either the temporary token GitHub provides or a personal access token	maybe
repo-token-user-login	with	Define this to save on comment processing time when checking for repeats. GitHub's default token uses github-actions[bot]	no
allow-repeats	with	A boolean flag to allow identical messages to be posted each time this action is run	no	false
proxy-url	with	A string for your proxy service URL if you'd like this to work with fork-based PRs	no
GITHUB_TOKEN	env	A valid GitHub token, can alternatively be defined in the env	maybe

Proxy for Fork-based PRs

GitHub limits GITHUB_TOKEN and other API access token permissions when creating a PR from a fork. This precludes adding comments when your PRs are coming from forks, which is the norm for open source projects. To work around this situation I've created a simple companion app you can deploy to Cloud Run or another host to proxy the create comment requests with a personal access token you provide.

See this issue: https://github.community/t/github-actions-are-severely-limited-on-prs/18179/4 for more details.

Check out the proxy service here: https://github.com/mshick/add-pr-comment-proxy

Example

on:
  pull_request:

jobs:
  pr:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: mshick/add-pr-comment@v1
        with:
          message: |
            **Howdie!**
          proxy-url: https://add-pr-comment-proxy-94idvmwyie-uc.a.run.app
          repo-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}