Create an Issue Action

A GitHub Action that creates a new issue using a template file.

Usage

This GitHub Action creates a new issue based on an issue template file. Here's an example workflow that creates a new issue any time you push a commit:

# .github/workflows/issue-on-push.yml
on: [push]
name: Create an issue on push
permissions:
  contents: read
  issues: write 
jobs:
  stuff:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: JasonEtco/create-an-issue@v2
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

This reads from the .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md file. This file should have front matter to help construct the new issue:

---
title: Someone just pushed
assignees: JasonEtco, matchai
labels: bug, enhancement
---
Someone just pushed, oh no! Here's who did it: {{ payload.sender.login }}.

You'll notice that the above example has some {{ mustache }} variables. Your issue templates have access to several things about the event that triggered the action. Besides issue and pullRequest, you have access to all the template variables on this list. You can also use environment variables:

- uses: JasonEtco/create-an-issue@v2
  env:
    GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    ADJECTIVE: great

Environment variables are pretty {{ env.ADJECTIVE }}, right?

Note that you can only assign people matching given conditions.

Dates

Additionally, you can use the date filter and variable to show some information about when this issue was created:

---
title: Weekly Radar {{ date | date('dddd, MMMM Do') }}
---
What's everyone up to this week?

This example will create a new issue with a title like Weekly Radar Saturday, November 10th. You can pass any valid Moment.js formatting string to the filter.

Custom templates

Don't want to use .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md? You can pass an input pointing the action to a different template:

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v3
  - uses: JasonEtco/create-an-issue@v2
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    with:
      filename: .github/some-other-template.md

Inputs

Want to use Action logic to determine who to assign the issue to, to assign a milestone or to update an existing issue with the same title? You can pass an input containing the following options:

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v3
  - uses: JasonEtco/create-an-issue@v2
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    with:
      assignees: JasonEtco, octocat
      milestone: 1
      update_existing: true
      search_existing: all

• The assignees and milestone speak for themselves.
• The update_existing param can be passed and set to true when you want to update an open issue with the exact same title when it exists and false if you don't want to create a new issue, but skip updating an existing one.
• The search_existing param lets you specify whether to search open, closed, or all existing issues for duplicates (default is open).

Outputs

If you need the number or URL of the issue that was created for another Action, you can use the number or url outputs, respectively. For example:

steps:
  - uses: JasonEtco/create-an-issue@v2
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    id: create-issue
  - run: 'echo Created issue number ${{ steps.create-issue.outputs.number }}'
  - run: 'echo Created ${{ steps.create-issue.outputs.url }}'