GitHub Actions (Scheduled Events)
GitHub Actions lets you run your workflows on a schedule.
If you add the example code below in your GitHub Workflow you will see that your workflow will run every 15 minutes.
on:
schedule:
# * is a special character in YAML so you have to quote this string
- cron: '*/15 * * * *'
i.e: The shortest interval you can run scheduled workflows is once every 5 minutes.
more details on scheduled events here:
https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/events-that-trigger-workflows#scheduled-events
Setup GitHub Actions:
Create a .yaml file here <project_dir>/.github/workflows/update_resume.yaml
paste this code in the created file:
name: Update My Resume
on:
push:
branches:
- master
schedule:
- cron: '0 */15 * * *'
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout Code
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: Setup Python Environment
uses: actions/setup-python@v2
with:
python-version: 3.7
- name: Install Requirements
run: pip install -r requirements.txt
- name: Execute Python script
run: |
python scripts/update.py
- name: setup git config
run: |
git config user.name ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
git config user.email ${{ secrets.EMAIL }}
- name: commit changes
run: |
chmod +x ./scripts/commit.sh
./scripts/commit.sh
Here the workflow will run on push events and also run automatically in every 15 minutes.
We are running the workflow on ubuntu-latest image.
In the first step github will checkout the code
- name: Checkout Code
uses: actions/checkout@v2
In the second step github will setup python 3.7
- name: Setup Python Environment
uses: actions/setup-python@v2
with:
python-version: 3.7
In the third step github will install the requirements using pip
I'm using the requests package on send request to the GitHub API.
If you don't need any external packages you can skip this.
- name: Install Requirements
run: pip install -r requirements.txt
In this step github will execute scripts/update.py.
Don't worry we haven't created the python script yet. More on this later.
- name: Execute Python script
run: |
python scripts/update.py
In this step github will setup the git config. you can go to https://github.com/<your_username>/<your_repository_name>/settings/secrets/new to create secrets (USERNAME, EMAIL).
This username and email will be used on the git commit.
- name: setup git config
run: |
git config user.name ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
git config user.email ${{ secrets.EMAIL }}
In this step github will commit the changes to your repository.
We will create the /scripts/commit.sh file in the next step.
- name: commit changes
run: |
chmod +x ./scripts/commit.sh
./scripts/commit.sh
Create Commit Script:
Create a file here <project_dir>/scripts/commit.sh
paste this code in the created file:
#!/bin/bash
git add .
git commit -m "Updated Repository data"
git push origin master
This is just a shell script which will push a new commit to your repository.
Create Json File:
this Json file will be updated using the update.py file that we will create later.
Create a file here <project_dir>/repo_data.json
paste this code in the created file:
[
{
"full_name": "readthedocs/readthedocs.org",
"url": "https://github.com/readthedocs/readthedocs.org"
},
{
"full_name": "saadmk11/banking-system",
"url": "https://github.com/saadmk11/banking-system"
}
]
Here I adding the open source projects that I have contributed to. We will update this file to
to show the correct number of starts, forks, watchers for each repository and update the description of the repository.
Create Python Script:
Create a file here <project_dir>/scripts/update.py
paste this code in the created file:
import json
import requests
def get_repositories_data(data):
new_data = []
for repo in data:
repo_name = repo['full_name']
url = f'https://api.github.com/repos/{repo_name}'
response = requests.get(url)
response_data = response.json()
repo.update({
"short_description": response_data['description'],
"stars": response_data['stargazers_count'],
"forks": response_data['forks_count'],
"watchers": response_data['watchers_count']
})
new_data.append(repo)
return new_data
def update_json_file():
with open('repo_data.json', 'r') as json_file:
data = json.load(json_file)
updated_data = get_repositories_data(data)
with open('repo_data.json', 'w') as json_file:
json_file.write(json.dumps(updated_data, indent=4))
if __name__ == '__main__':
update_json_file()
This script will send GET request to the GitHub API and get the latest updates of the repositories that I listed in the Json file and update the repo_data.json file to show the current number of starts, watchers and forks and update the description.
Create the requirements.txt file here <project_dir>/requirements.txt and add requests==2.24.0 in it.
Create HTML and JS File to Load The JSON Data:
Create a file here <project_dir>/index.html
Add this code in the created file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title>My Resume</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="openSourceRepos"></div>
<script src="main.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
** This is just to show the example you can style and design your resume any way you like.
Create a file here <project_dir>/main.js
Add this code in the created file:
function getJSON(url, callbackFunction) {
var xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
if (xmlhttp.readyState == 4 && xmlhttp.status == 200) {
try {
var responseData = JSON.parse(xmlhttp.responseText);
} catch(error) {
return;
}
callbackFunction(responseData);
}
};
xmlhttp.open("GET", url, true);
xmlhttp.send();
}
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', (event) => {
var container = document.getElementById("openSourceRepos");
getJSON('repo_data.json', function(data) {
data.forEach(function (repo) {
var child = `
<div>
<h2>
<a href='${repo.url}'>${repo.full_name}</a>
</h2>
<p>${repo.short_description}</p>
<ul>
<li>${repo.stars}</li>
<li>${repo.forks}</li>
<li>${repo.watchers}</li>
</ul>
</div>
`;
container.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', child);
});
});
});
This JavaScript File will load the repository data from the Json file and display it on the html. Here I have used XMLHttpRequest but you can use Fetch API or JQuery to load the Json File.
After all the steps are done your project repository tree should look like this
project_dir
│ index.html
│ main.js
│ requirements.txt
│ repo_data.json
│
└───scripts
│ │ commit.sh
│ │ update.py
│
└───.github
| |
│ └───workflows
| | update_resume.yaml
|
Setup GitHub Pages:
I use GitHub Pages to host my Resume.
You can learn more about How to setup GitHub Pages Here
After your setup is Done. GitHub will run your workflow every 15 minutes and if there is any change in the
repositories listed in the json file the python script will update it and the changed file will be committed
to your repository. So, the repositories you have listed in your resume will always be up to date.
Conclusion
I showed a small thing you can do with schedules on GitHub Actions.
But you can do a lot of more complex things using this.
You can automate many things on your website.
If you read this post and make something using it please feel free to share
with me on twitter or in the comments.
This is my first post! :)
Top comments (4)
Oh snap, I didn't realise you could schedule cron jobs for GitHub Actions! That's rad. Another example of why I should read through documentation properly. Nice piece!
Yeah! Its pretty neat that you can schedule cron jobs. It brings out a lot of use cases.
well-thought-out :)
Thanks!