TODO to Issue Action

This action will convert your # TODO comments to GitHub issues when a new commit is pushed.

The new issue will contain a link to the line in the file containing the TODO, together with a code snippet. The action performs a GET request to retrieve GitHub's languages.yml file file to apply highlighting to the snippet.

It will also close an issue when a # TODO is removed in a pushed commit. A comment will be posted with the ref of the commit that it was closed by.

The # TODO comment is commonly used in Python, but this can be customised to whatever you want.

Usage

Create a workflow file in your .github/workflows directory as follows:

workflow.yaml

Latest version is v1.2-beta.

name: "Workflow"
on: ["push"]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: "ubuntu-latest"
    steps:
      - uses: "actions/checkout@master"
      - name: "TODO to Issue"
        uses: "alstr/todo-to-issue-action@v1.2-beta"
        with:
          REPO: ${{ github.repository }}
          BEFORE: ${{ github.event.before }}
          SHA: ${{ github.sha }}
          TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          LABEL: "# TODO"
          COMMENT_MARKER: "#"
        id: "todo"

If you use the action in a new repo, you should initialise the repo with an empty commit.

Inputs

Input	Description
REPO	The path to the repository where the action will be used, e.g. 'alstr/my-repo' (automatically set)
BEFORE	The SHA of the last pushed commit (automatically set)
SHA	The SHA of the latest commit (automatically set)
TOKEN	The GitHub access token to allow us to retrieve, create and update issues (automatically set)
LABEL	The label that will be used to identify TODO comments (by default this is # TODO for Python)
COMMENT_MARKER	The marker used to signify a line comment in your code (by default this is # for Python)

Examples

Adding TODOs

def hello_world():
    # TODO Come up with a more imaginative greeting
    print('Hello world!')

This will create an issue called "Come up with a more imaginative greeting".

The action expects a colon and/or space to follow the TODO label (so TODO: or just TODO).

Should the title be longer than 50 characters, it will be truncated for the issue title.

The full title will be included in the issue body and a todo label will be attached to the issue.

A reference hash is added to the end of the issue body. This is to help prevent duplication of TODOs.

Multiline TODOs

def hello_world():
    # TODO Come up with a more imaginative greeting
    #  Everyone uses hello world and it's boring.
    print('Hello world!')

You can create a multiline todo by continuing below the initial TODO declaration with a comment.

The extra line(s) will be posted in the body of the issue.

The COMMENT_MARKER input must be set to the correct syntax (e.g. # for Python).

Removing TODOs

def hello_world():
    print('Hello world!')

Removing the # TODO comment will close the issue on push. This is still an experimental feature.

Updating TODOs

def hello_world():
    # TODO Come up with a more imaginative greeting, like "Greetings world!"
    print('Hello world!')

Should you change the # TODO text, this will currently create a new issue, so bear that in mind.

This may be updated in future.

Contributing & Issues

The action was developed for the GitHub Hackathon and is still in an early stage. Whilst every effort is made to ensure it works, it comes with no guarantee.

It may not yet work for events other than push or those with a complex workflow syntax .

If you do encounter any problems, please file an issue. PRs are welcome and appreciated!

Thanks

Thanks to Jacob Tomlinson for his handy overview of GitHub Actions .

Thanks to GitHub's linguist repo for the languages.yml file used by the app to determine the correct highlighting to apply to code snippets.