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
   

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2. 1. Github Actions in a Nutshell
   

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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
   

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4. GitHub Actions Overview
   ● Common use cases: run tests and code
   quality checks on merge / PR etc
   ● Less common use cases: something like
   Dynacover
   

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5. The GitHub Actions Ecosystem
   ● Actions
   ● Workflows
   ● Triggers
   ● Action Secrets
   

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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
   

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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
   

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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
   

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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
   

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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
    

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11. 2. Minicli Overview &
    The Demo App
    

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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
    

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14. The Demo app
    

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15. 3. Turning a Minicli app into a
    GitHub Action
    

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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?
    

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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"]
    

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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'
    

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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
    

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20. Creating a Workflow
    name: Import posts from DEV
    on:
    schedule:
    - cron: "0 1 * * *"
    workflow_dispatch
    :
    jobs:
    main:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    (...)
    

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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 }}
    

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22. Complete workflow for reference
    

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23. Testing the workflow
    

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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
    

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26. Thank You!
    @erikaheidi
    

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