[Draft] Exploration: From issue template to branches

[allejo]

I've been thinking of a little experiment to build. I want to try improving the process of adding resources to this repository. Right now, we're using Issue Templates to get the appropriate information from users. The format for issues created from templates are pretty standard. So as long as the user doesn't modify the issue contents too much, we can parse the issue body with something like GrantBirki/issue-template-parser.

steps:
  - name: Parse Issue
    id: parse-issue
    uses: GrantBirki/[email protected]
    with:
      body: ${{ github.event.issue.body }}

  - name: Output Issue JSON
    id: output-issue
    run: echo ${{ steps.issue-parser.outputs.json }}

This method isn't 100% reliable as manual edits or weird syntax could break this parsing method. However, if everyone plays nice, then this should be able to get the job done. I think it's a risk I'm willing to take.

Moving on, once we've parsed the issue body, the next task is to create a new branch with a new file inside of src/_resources. Next up, using the JSON from the parsed issue contents, we can now write a file with the filled in information.

title="${{ fromJSON(steps.parse-issue.outputs.json).title }}"
file_name=$(echo $title | tr '\s' '-')

cat <<EOF > src/_resources/case-study-$file_name.md
---
date: ...
title: $title
---
EOF

Now, this code could be written in Bash and let it be embedded in the workflow. Or we could also write this as a Python script in the repo and simply execute it from the workflow.

Lastly, you'd be able to use something like EndBug/add-and-commit to add and commit this file to the new branch.

---

What are your thoughts on investing time into building something like this?

[thekaveman]

@allejo you literally read @vykster's mind!! We were just talking about this.

Yes please, go ahead and look into this.

• Please use Python rather than bash if needing a scripting language
• (Maybe you planned on this) but please also open a PR for the branch in the GitHub Action, similar to what you did for the MobiMart map: https://github.com/cal-itp/mobility-marketplace/blob/main/.github/workflows/provider-map-jobs.yml#L53

[machikoyasuda]

I approve of this message.