Building a blog using github issues

I wanted to see if I could write blog posts using github issues, and have them be published on the web. You can!

Create a jekyll site

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  cd $(mktemp -d)
  bundle init
  bundle add jekyll
  bundle exec jekyll new issue-blog
  cursor issue-blog

Then inside

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  bundle add jekyll-compose
  bundle
  jekyll s

Create the repo

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  git init
  git add .
  git commit -m "initial commit"
  gh repo create wschenk/issue-blog --public
  gh repo edit -d "Playground to make posts and comments from github issues"
  git remote add origin https://github.com/wschenk/issue-blog
  git push origin main

Add the secret

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  gh auth token | gh secret set AUTH_TOKEN

Issue to Post workflow

When you open or edit and issue, we check out the repo, and then create a file in the _posts directory can fill in the information

Once that's done, we trigger a deploy action using peter-evans/repository-dispatch to trigger the second build action.

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  name: Issue to Post

  on:
    workflow_dispatch:
    issues:
      types:
        - opened
        - edited

  permissions: write-all

  jobs:
    create_post:
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      steps:
        - name: Checkout repository
          uses: actions/checkout@v2
        - name: Create post file
          run: |
            POST_FILENAME="_posts/$(date +%Y-%m-%d)-$(echo -n ${{github.event.issue.title}} | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]' | tr -c 'a-z' '-' ).md"
            echo "POST_FILENAME: ${POST_FILENAME}"
            echo --- > ${POST_FILENAME}
            echo title: "${{github.event.issue.title}}" >> ${POST_FILENAME}
            echo layout: post >> ${POST_FILENAME}
            echo date: $(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M %z") >> ${POST_FILENAME}
            echo --- >> ${POST_FILENAME}
            echo >> ${POST_FILENAME}
            echo "${{github.event.issue.body}}" >> ${POST_FILENAME}            
        - name: Commit and push changes
          run: |
            git config --global user.email "readme-bot@example.com"
            git config --global user.name "README-bot"
            git add .
            git commit -m "Create post for issue #${{ github.event.issue.number }}"
            git push            
          env:
            GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.AUTH_TOKEN }}
        - name: Trigger deploy action
          uses: peter-evans/repository-dispatch@v3
          with:
            event-type: deploy

Deploy to pages

Here we check out the code and deploy it to github pages. We replace the baseurl with the base_path that we get from configure-pages, so its smart enough to know if you have it on a custom domain or as a subdirectory.

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  name: "Build and Deploy"
  on:
    repository_dispatch:
      types: [deploy]
    push:
      branches:
        - main
        - master
      paths-ignore:
        - .gitignore
        - README.md
        - LICENSE
        - .github/

    # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab
    workflow_dispatch:

  permissions:
    contents: read
    pages: write
    id-token: write

  # Allow one concurrent deployment
  concurrency:
    group: "pages"
    cancel-in-progress: true

  jobs:
    build:
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest

      steps:
        - name: Checkout
          uses: actions/checkout@v4

          - name: Setup Pages
          id: pages
          uses: actions/configure-pages@v4

        - name: Setup Ruby
          uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
          with:
            ruby-version: 3.3
            bundler-cache: true
        - name: Replace baseurl
          run: |
            sed -i 's|baseurl: ""|baseurl: "${{ steps.pages.outputs.base_path }}"|' _config.yml            
        - name: Build site
          run: bundle exec jekyll b -d "_site${{ steps.pages.outputs.base_path }}"
          env:
            JEKYLL_ENV: "production"

        - name: Upload site artifact
          uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
          with:
            path: "_site${{ steps.pages.outputs.base_path }}"

    deploy:
      environment:
        name: github-pages
        url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      needs: build
      steps:
        - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
          id: deployment
          uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

Check it out

You can see it in action:

Building a blog using github issues

what else can we do with github actions

Contents

Create a jekyll site

Create the repo

Add the secret

Issue to Post workflow

Deploy to pages

Check it out

Roda + Sequel

maybe its time to move past sinatra

i heart ruby