BYOB is a GitHub Action to create badges dynamically based off of GitHub Actions' results, allowing for extremely versatile and easily-maintainable badges.

Current solutions allow for simple statuses based off of Actions' results, however with BYOB, you can have as many badges updated as wanted, with every part of the badge changeable by code in the Action.

A simple workflow file updating a badge on the current time is shown below.

jobs:
  badge_job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - id: date
        run: echo "##[set-output name=data;]$(date)"
      - name: Time badge
        uses: RubbaBoy/[email protected]
        with:
          NAME: time
          LABEL: 'Updated at'
          STATUS: ${{ steps.date.outputs.data }}
          COLOR: 00EEFF
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Using this badge (Named time) in the repository RubbaBoy/Example is as simple as:

![](https://byob.yarr.is/RubbaBoy/Example/time)

This badge looks like:

The following are some more example workflows using icons. They may either be an icon name from badgen, or a URL to an SVG. Only the with portion, not including the GITHUB_TOKEN, is shown for simplicity.

NAME: github
LABEL: 'GitHub'
ICON: 'github'
STATUS: 'BYOBTest'
COLOR: blue

NAME: git
ICON: 'git'
STATUS: 'Git'
COLOR: red

NAME: custom
ICON: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RubbaBoy/BYOBTest/master/icons/dollar.svg'
STATUS: 'Custom Icons'
COLOR: red

It should be noted that icons pointing to external URLs are cached for 1 day. The resulting icon is:

NAME: emoji
ICON: '😎'
STATUS: 'Emojis'
COLOR: purple

Emojis are rendered using Twemoji, with the above resulting badge being:

NAME: custom
ICON: 'data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIGhlaWdodD0iMjRweCIgdmlld0JveD0iMCAwIDI0IDI0IiB3aWR0aD0iMjRweCIgZmlsbD0iI0YwMCI+PHBhdGggZD0iTTAgMGgyNHYyNEgweiIgZmlsbD0ibm9uZSIvPjxwYXRoIGQ9Ik0xMiAyMS4zNWwtMS40NS0xLjMyQzUuNCAxNS4zNiAyIDEyLjI4IDIgOC41IDIgNS40MiA0LjQyIDMgNy41IDNjMS43NCAwIDMuNDEuODEgNC41IDIuMDlDMTMuMDkgMy44MSAxNC43NiAzIDE2LjUgMyAxOS41OCAzIDIyIDUuNDIgMjIgOC41YzAgMy43OC0zLjQgNi44Ni04LjU1IDExLjU0TDEyIDIxLjM1eiIvPjwvc3ZnPg=='
STATUS: 'Custom Icons'
COLOR: blue

The above ICON value is a Base64 encoded representation of a colored SVG Material Icon. This provides for great flexibility, with the benefit of keeping it local. The resulting icon is:

Other URL schemes are supported as well. The general scheme after https://byob.yarr.is/ is:

/nameOrOrg/repo/badgeName/branch/path/to/shields.json

Only up to branch is required. The following are examples of more advanced badge URLs.

Badges may be used off of the default orphan shields branch. For example, on the dev branch:

![](https://byob.yarr.is/RubbaBoy/Example/time/dev)

Badges may also use custom JSON paths, allowing for multiple files per project for whatever your usecase may be. The branch must be included in this URL. The following shows a path to /child/dir/badges.json

![](https://byob.yarr.is/RubbaBoy/Example/time/shields/child/dir/badges.json)

An example of a repo with multiple badges may be found here: BYOBTest

It is now possible to host the generated json file in an alternate public repo. Which would allow you to have an action that runs on a private repo to host the badge metadata in a public repo

The general steps are as follows:

• Login to GitHub and create a Personal Access Token. (Select repo scope) and copy generated secret
• Go to the private repo where the action runs. Settings > Secrets > New repository secret
• Name your secret according to how you want to reference it within the BYOB workflow step. i.e ${{ ACTIONS_TOKEN }} so you can reference them like ${{ secrets.ACTIONS_TOKEN }}
• Define the two optional inputs repository and actor where repository is in the form nameOrg/repoName and the actor is the user who created the personal access token.
• Finally, follow the steps above to obtain your URL but replace the orgName/repo part with your public repo

NAME: github
LABEL: 'GitHub'
ICON: 'github'
STATUS: 'BYOBTest'
COLOR: blue
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ACTIONS_TOKEN }}
REPOSITORY: RubbaBoy/BYOBTest
ACTOR: RubbaBoy

BYOB is very simple, consisting of the GitHub Action and a small server-side script. The Action updates a json file containing all badge info. This is by default the shields branch as to keep the commit history clean on working branches. Each badge has a name associated with it only used for identification purposes, and is not displayed.

When the Action is invoked, it will update only the badge names that have changed, to allow for more persistent data. Whenever a badge is invoked, a push is made to the repo updating the file. No badge data is stored server-side.

The actual badges are generated by Badgen (A great service/API, check it out if you have a chance!). The hosted endpoint uses the code here. It reads the given repositories' JSON file containing shields data in it, and returns a Badgen-generated badge.