Week 11: Getting the App Live#
Hi, I’m Robin and this is my blog about week 11.
This week I worked on Getting the GitHub App live.
Getting the App Live
Last week I prototyped and got to know the language and the API. But I can’t use my account as an automated bot account. So it was required to make a GitHub App. The architecture for it is as follows:
Make a GitHub App to listen to Discussion posts
Send a webhook to https://robinroy03-github-bot.hf.space/github whenever any change happens.
Respond to the webhook as required.
I was told by Serge to try and fit the endpoint inside the Discord Bot script. I tried but it was weird so I left it. The Discord Bot is set up using threading which is a hack (although it is how every discord bot is set up in HuggingFace). Placing it inside any other repository won’t be good so I ended up making another new repository.
I faced an issue while trying to get the app live. I had another documentation rabbit hole situation. So what ended up happening was I was unable to authenticate myself with the GitHub app to send commands. To command an app you have to authenticate as a GitHub App Installation. To authenticate as an App installation, you need 3 key things:
Installation ID
App ID
Private Key of the App
You use the App ID and Private Key to make a JWT. You use the JWT with Installation ID to make an Installation Access Token. You’ll now use this Installation Access Token to authorize you and then send commands to the GitHub App. The Access Token will expire after 1 hour, so we’ll have to regenerate it.
The problem was that the documentation didn’t mention how to generate Installation Access Token and it kept confusing everyone with Installation ID. Even the names were misleading, since it isn’t an Installation Token in the real sense cause it is already installed. I ended up fixing it by landing at this StackOverflow Post which took me to this Discussions Post. I think the majority uses Octokit.js SDK to generate Access Tokens and regenerate JWTs. Sadly Python has no library so we had to go all manual.
So I ended up sending a PR to GitHub Docs :)
Issue: github/docs#34258
You can test the GitHub App today! Checkout robinroy03/FURY-data-script#discussions
What is coming up next week?#
Week 12 :) I’ll be finalizing stuff.
Make the GitHub App respond to mentions.
Did you get stuck anywhere?#
Was stuck with the documentation but got it fixed.
LINKS:
Thank you for reading!