Building GitHub Actions in PHP with Minicli

In this talk for Laracon EU 2022, I walk through what GitHub Actions are and how you can create your own Actions using Minicli, a microframework for the command line in PHP.

Transcript

1. Erika Heidi @ Laracon EU 2022
2. 1. Github Actions in a Nutshell
3. GitHub Actions Overview • Feature that allows GitHub users to create automated pipelines that can be triggered by events or run on schedule • Popular for CI/CD • Open source repos get unlimited action runs for free • The GitHub Marketplace has a large collection of ready-to-use Actions contributed by the community
4. GitHub Actions Overview • Common use cases: run tests and code quality checks on merge / PR etc • Less common use cases: something like Dynacover
5. The GitHub Actions Ecosystem • Actions • Workflows • Triggers • Action Secrets
6. Actions • Self-contained units of execution that can be combined in workflows • Actions live in dedicated repositories with an action.yml file that defines its configuration • You can combine actions from the marketplace with your own custom actions • Actions must be packaged as Docker images
7. Workflows • A configurable process that runs one or more jobs • Each job can have multiple steps • Steps can be either an Action or a shell script • Steps run in order and share data • Jobs run in parallel unless otherwise specified • Defined in a YAML file committed to the repository • You can have several different workflows in the same repository
8. Workflow Example: PHP Composer name: PHP Composer on: push: branches: [ main ] jobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v2 - name: Install dependencies run: composer install --prefer-dist --no-progress - name: Run test suite run: composer test
9. Triggers • Workflows can be triggered by events such as new commits, new issues, when a PR is created, etc • Workflows can also run on schedule, similar to cron jobs • When on schedule, the minimal interval is five minutes
10. Action Secrets • Encrypted environment variables accessible only by GitHub Actions • Can be set at repository level or per environment • Ideal for storing API keys and auth tokens
11. 2. Minicli Overview & The Demo App
12. Minicli Overview • Microframework for CLI PHP apps • Simple command architecture • Commands defined as callback (single-file app) or controllers (structured app) • Dependency-free (except for tests) • Ideal for small cron jobs, bots, simple workers
14. The Demo app
15. 3. Turning a Minicli app into a GitHub Action
16. Preparation • What will trigger this action? • Do I need to combine this action with others? • Do I need to use repository secrets or environment variables to configure my action? • If my action creates output that needs to be persisted, where this content goes?
17. Packaging Minicli with Docker FROM php:8.1-cli RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y git curl libxml2-dev zip unzip RUN apt-get clean && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer RUN mkdir /application COPY . /application/ RUN cd /application && composer install ENTRYPOINT [ "php", "/application/minicli" ] CMD ["import", "dev"]
18. The action.yml file name: 'Import DEV.to posts' description: 'Imports posts from DEV.to as markdown files' outputs: response: description: 'Output from command' runs: using: 'docker' image: 'Dockerfile'
19. Tagging your action git add . git commit -m "My first action is ready" git tag -a -m "My first action release" v1 git push --follow-tags
20. Creating a Workflow name: Import posts from DEV on: schedule: - cron: "0 1 * * *" workflow_dispatch : jobs: main: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: (...)
21. Creating a Workflow: Steps - uses: actions/checkout@v2 - uses: erikaheidi/importDevTo@v1.2 name: "Import posts from DEV" env: DEVTO_USERNAME: erikaheidi APP_DATA_DIR: ${{ github.workspace }}/devto - name: Create a PR uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v3 with: commit-message: Import posts from DEV title: "[automated] Import posts from DEV" token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
22. Complete workflow for reference
23. Testing the workflow
25. References / Useful Links • ImportDevTo Action Repository ◦ https://github.com/erikaheidi/importDevTo • How to Create a GitHub Action to Import Posts from DEV to a Repository you Own (tutorial) ◦ https://bit.ly/38nANwc • GitHub Actions documentation ◦ https://docs.github.com/en/actions • Minicli documentation ◦ https://docs.minicli.dev • Other actions built with Minicli ◦ Dynacover: https://github.com/erikaheidi/dynacover-actions ◦ Update CONTRIBUTORS: https://github.com/minicli/action-contributors
26. Thank You! @erikaheidi