Newly created GitHub repositories come with a default set of labels. I have several labels I like to add on top of these. The most important is research, which I use for issues that are tracking my notes on a research topic relevant to the repository.
I've wanted a fast way to add these to new repositories for ages. Inspired by this tweet by Lea Verou I finally decided to build a system for this.
I love automating things relating to GitHub using GitHub Actions, because it saves me from having to execute code anywhere else.
I decided to solve this problem with a workflow called labels.yml. The idea is that you copy this file into any repository in the .github/workflows/ directory and it creates the labels for you using the GitHub API.
Because it's running in GitHub Actions you don't need to create an API key for it - it can use the key that is made available automatically to the workflow.
It took a bit of iteration, but eventually I got to the following:
name: Update repository labels
on:
push:
branches:
- main
paths:
- '.github/workflows/labels.yml'
jobs:
create-labels:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
permissions:
issues: write
env:
LABELS_JSON: |
[
{"name": "research", "color": "ededed", "description": "Research needed"},
{"name": "ops", "color": "c2e0c6", "description": "Ops task"},
{"name": "ci", "color": "bfdadc", "description": "Related to GitHub Actions CI"},
{"name": "demo", "color": "bfdadc", "description": "Demo label"}
]
steps:
- uses: actions/github-script@v7
with:
script: |
const labels = JSON.parse(process.env.LABELS_JSON);
for (const label of labels) {
try {
await github.rest.issues.createLabel({
owner: context.repo.owner,
repo: context.repo.repo,
name: label.name,
description: label.description || '',
color: label.color
});
} catch (error) {
// Check if the error is because the label already exists
if (error.status === 422) {
console.log(`Label '${label.name}' already exists. Skipping.`);
} else {
// Log other errors
console.error(`Error creating label '${label.name}': ${error}`);
}
}
}The labels themselves are defined in that LABELS_JSON block, which seemed like a relatively easy way to add editable structured data to the workflow file.
The workflow is configured to only run when a push to the repository edits or creates that workflow file itself:
on:
push:
branches:
- main
paths:
- '.github/workflows/labels.yml'The bulk of the work is done using that actions/github-script step. This is a powerful action that pre-configures a GitHub JavaScript client library for you, with authentication tokens already provided.
The JavaScript loops through the labels from that earlier JSON blob and attempts ot create each one of them. If they already exist it skips them.
(I may update this in the future to update the color and description if they have changed on an existing label.)
One other crucial detail is this bit:
permissions:
issues: writeThat took me a while to figure out: without it, the API token made available to the github/script doesn't have permission to modify the labels attached to the repository.
Drop that workflow into any GitHub repository, edit the LABELS_JSON to your preferences and it should execute and add labels!
You can see the result in my create-labels-workflow repo - here are the labels.
Created 2024-02-09T14:54:08-08:00 · Edit