Automatically update your CONTRIBUTORS file with this GitHub Action + Workflow

My Workflow

I wanted to build something simple but yet useful for open source maintainers. So here's what I built: an action to automatically generate a CONTRIBUTORS.md file based on a project's top contributors, using the GitHub API to pull information about the project. The workflow then uses another action to create a pull request or commit the changes directly to the same repository where the workflow is configured.

The action runs a single-command application created with Minicli, a minimalist command-line framework for building PHP CLI commands.

The application, action, and example workflows can be found here:

minicli / action-contributors

GitHub Action to dynamically update CONTRIBUTORS file

Generate / Update CONTRIBUTORS File - GitHub Action

This GitHub Action updates a CONTRIBUTORS file with the top contributors from the specified project, pulling contents from the GitHub API. You can use it in combination with an action to push changes directly into your project's main branch, or with an action that creates a PR with the updated file.

Supported Configuration via Environment Variables:

• CONTRIB_REPOSITORY: The repository you want to pull contributors from. This is mandatory.
• CONTRIB_OUTPUT_FILE: The file you want to generate, default set to CONTRIBUTORS.md.
• CONTRIB_STENCIL_DIR: Where to find Stencil templates. Default set to .stencil.
• CONTRIB_TEMPLATE: The stencil template to use - you can use this to customize the generated markdown file. Default set to the included contributors.tpl file.
• CONTRIB_IGNORE: A comma-separated string with users to ignore. Default set to github-actions[bot],renovate-bot,dependabot.

Basic Usage

This action is made to use in conjunction with test-room-7/action-update-file in order…

View on GitHub

Note: If you want to learn how I built this, check out this post: How to build GitHub Actions in PHP with Minicli and Docker.

Submission Category:

Maintainer Must-Haves

Yaml File or Link to Code

Here is an example workflow to run this action once a month and commit the changes directly to the main project's branch:

name: Update CONTRIBUTORS file
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 0 1 * *"
  workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
  main:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: minicli/action-contributors@v2
        name: 'Update a projects CONTRIBUTORS file'
        env:
          CONTRIB_REPOSITORY: 'minicli/minicli'
          CONTRIB_OUTPUT_FILE: 'CONTRIBUTORS.md'
      - name: Update resources
        uses: test-room-7/action-update-file@v1
        with:
          file-path: 'CONTRIBUTORS.md'
          commit-msg: Update Contributors
          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

You need to replace the CONTRIB_REPOSITORY value with the GitHub project you want to pull contributors from.

If you'd prefer to create a pull request instead of committing the changes directly to the main branch, you can use the create-pull-request action instead. For that, you'll also need to include the actions/checkout GitHub Action:

name: Update CONTRIBUTORS file
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 0 1 * *"
  workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
  main:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: minicli/action-contributors@v3
        name: "Update a projects CONTRIBUTORS file"
        env:
          CONTRIB_REPOSITORY: 'minicli/minicli'
          CONTRIB_OUTPUT_FILE: 'CONTRIBUTORS.md'
      - name: Create a PR
        uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v3
        with:
          commit-message: Update Contributors
          title: "[automated] Update Contributors File"
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Additional Resources / Info

Projects using this action:

• minicli/minicli
• minicli/docs

If you want to learn how I built this, check out this post: How to build GitHub Actions in PHP with Minicli and Docker.

Comments

[AlessandroMinoccheri]

It's a very interesting workflow!
I will try it!

Thanks.

[Trang Le]

I've always thought of implementing something like this to celebrate amazing contributors, but don't know how to implement. Great solution.

[Erika Heidi]

Thank you!

[Kaiz Khatri]

Awesome job ❤️

[Erika Heidi]

Thank you!

[Evil Commissar]

Very robust and clean solution! Awesome!

I would love to see also bumping VERSION file using similiar approach. Like, from 1.2.3 -> 1.2.4

[Erika Heidi]

Thank you <3