check-pull-request-action

Check pull request format action

This GitHub Actions script (or action) aims at checking that a pull request is well-formed before being merged to the main branch of a repository. This also aims to verify the message of the commits inside the pull-request (called inner-commits) is well formed for the semantic- release tool.

It particularly targets repositories using the squash and merge commit strategy to keep their commit history clean and readable.

It also targets repositories using the semantic-release tool for automatically generating releases based on conventional commits standard. Here, only non-conventional (squash and merge) commits are expected in the main branch, each with a reference to the pull request it was squashed from, allowing to refer to the inner-commits, though the latter were squashed during the merging of the pull request to the main branch. The format of such squash and merge commits is as follows:

Modify the data model (#13)

where the block (#13), and particularly the number 13, is the index of the pull request containing the commits that were squashed and merged.

The format of inner-commit's message is as follows:

type(scope): something changed

Where type is mandatory and picked from a list defined in the contributor's guide, scope is not mandatory and refers to the scope the commit changed.

Input parameters

The following input parameters

Parameter	Description	Mandatory	Default
github-token	GitHub token for accessing GitHub repositories.	Yes	None
pull-request-number	GitHub pull request number to verify.	Yes	None

Output parameters

None

Using the action in a workflow

The sample GitHub Actions workflow below shows how this action can be used as a step of a GitHub Actions worklflow:

name: Verify pull request format
on:
  pull_request_target:
    types: [opened, synchronize]

jobs:
  check:
    name: Check pull request
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Analyze pull request title
        uses: SofairOfficial/github-actions/check-pull-request-action@main
        with:
          pull-request-number: "${{ github.event.pull_request.number }}"
          github-token: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"

Building the code

This GitHub Actions script is implemented using Typescript. The following command should be used to build it when modifying its code:

$ npm build

Testing the code

Unit tests can be executed as follows:

$ npm test

Testing the action

A way for testing the action locally is by executing the providedtest-check-pull-request-action workflow using Act tool. For doing so, the following command should be executed at the root of this repository:

act -s GITHUB_TOKEN=[Your_Personal_Github_Token] pull_request_target

References

• Typescript Action boilerplate
• Hassan SANI. June 6th 2022. Creating your own GitHub action with TypeScript
• https://github.com/ktrz/gh-action-js-marathon/blob/feat/setup-action/.github/workflows/test.yml