Use outputs

[github-learning-lab[bot]]

sohalloran it's time to get ready for the third action 🎉

As with the other actions we wrote, we are going to need to setup a few directories and files.

:keyboard: Activity: Configure your third action

Let's create our final project directory and install all the necessary dependencies. We will take this a step further near the end of this action and we will show you how to avoid needing to check in node_modules.

1. Open the Terminal (Mac and Linux) or Command Prompt (Windows) on your local machine
2. navigate to the .github/actions directory.
3. Checkout the main branch

   git checkout main

4. Update the contents of your Learning Lab repo to your local machine:

   git pull

5. Checkout the action-three branch you created for this pull request.

   git checkout action-three

6. Create a new folder for our actions files. The full path should be .github/actions/issue-maker.

   mkdir issue-maker

7. Navigate to the issue-maker folder you just created. The full path should be .github/actions/issue-maker

   cd issue-maker

8. Initialize a new project:

   npm init -y

9. Install the @actions/core and @actions/github dependencies using npm:

   npm install --save @actions/core @actions/github

10. Commit those newly added files,we will remove the need to upload node_modules in a later step. Push your changes to GitHub:

    git add .
    git commit -m 'add issue maker dependencies'
    git push

---

I will respond once you have pushed to this branch.

[github-learning-lab[bot]]

Create and edit the third actions action.yml file

Like our "hello world" action, this action will require at least one input: parameter. We need this parameter so that our JavaScript for this action has access to the output: from the joke action.

If you recall, in the my-workflow.yml file, we stated this action would take a specific input named joke: and we set it's value to the output of the previous action.

- name: create-issue
  uses: ./.github/actions/issue-maker
  with:
    joke: ${{steps.jokes.outputs.joke-output}}

Because of this, we need to define joke: as one of our inputs: for this action. Remember when we did this with the first action? It looked a little like this:

inputs:
  first-greeting:
    description: who you would like to greet in the console
    required: true
    default: Hubot

Now, we will do something similar so that our action matches what our workflow expects.

:keyboard: Activity: Create the final metadata file

💡All of the following steps take place inside of the .github/actions/issue-maker directory.

We will use the joke output, an issue-title, and the repo-token in this portion of the course as inputs: for our action.

1. Create a file named action.yml with the following contents:

   name: "I have issues"
   
   description: "consume the output of the previous action and create a new issue in the repository"
   
   inputs:
     joke:
       description: "This will become the body of the created issue"
     issue-title:
       description: "Every issue needs a title, it's nice to supply one, even though you could do this dynamically within your code"
       default: "a joke for you"
       required: true
     repo-token:
       description: "Token with permissions to do repo things"
   
   runs:
     using: "node12"
     main: "index.js"

2. Save the action.yml file
3. Commit the changes and push them to GitHub:

   git add action.yml
   git commit -m 'create action.yml'
   git push

---

I will respond when you commit to this branch.