Post to Mastodon GitHub Action

About

A Github Action which sends a toot to Mastodon instance when you publish a new blog post. Helps you to share your blog post on Mastodon automatically.

Usage

The Action expects few environment variables to be set. access_token needs to be set as a secret in the repository. Others can be defined in the with section of the action. Here's an example:

name: Send a toot to Mastodon

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master  # Set a branch to deploy

jobs:
  post-to-mastodon:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          fetch-depth: '0'
      # This is required to get the latest commit message with files names
      - name: Set env variables
        run: |
          # prints the current branch name
          echo $GITHUB_HEAD_REF
          # checkouts to the current branch which in case is master
          git checkout $GITHUB_HEAD_REF
          # format the commit message
          RECENTLY_ADDED_FILES=$(git log -1 --stat --oneline --name-only | tr '\n' '|')
          echo $RECENTLY_ADDED_FILES
          # set it as an environment variable
          echo "RECENTLY_ADDED_FILES=$RECENTLY_ADDED_FILES" >> $GITHUB_ENV

      - name: Post to Mastodon
        uses: sumit4613/[email protected]
        with:
          # This is the message that will be sent to Mastodon, override it with your own message if you want
          message: "Hello, folks! I just posted a new blog post. Check it out!"
          # Base URL of your blog post where your posts are hosted
          base_blog_url: "https://sumit4613.github.io/posts/"
          # access token of your Mastodon account
          access_token: ${{ secrets.MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
          # Mastodon instance URL, default is fosstodon.org
          host: "fosstodon.org"
          port: "443"
          api: "api/v1"

Inputs

This action expects few inputs to be passed to it. Here's a list of all the inputs:

Name	Description
message	Message to be sent to Mastodon Default is set to Hello, folks! I just posted a new blog post. Check it out! Override this is you want to send toot with different message.
base_blog_url	Base URL of your blog post where your posts are hosted.
base_directory	Base directory where your blog posts are stored. Default is set to content/posts/
access_token	Access token of your Mastodon account.
host	Mastodon instance URL. Default is set to fosstodon.org
port	Port of Mastodon instance. Default is set to 443
api	API endpoint of Mastodon instance. Default is set to api/v1

Notes

• This action will only send a toot when publish is there in your commit message, and it contains a file name which starts with the base_directory value. For example, if your base_directory is content/posts/ and your commit message contains publish content/posts/test-github-action.md, then it will send a toot to Mastodon.

Getting access token from Mastodon

• Go to your Mastodon instance and login to your account.
• Go to Preferences or Settings -> Development -> New Application
• Fill the form with the following values:
  • Application name: <your-app-name>
  • Redirect URI: urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob
• We atleast need read and write permissions for this action to work.
• Click on Submit or Register button.
• You will see a page with Client Key, Client Secret and Access Token.
• Copy the Access Token and set it as a secret in your repository.
• 

How it looks like on Mastodon

Contributing

Suggestions and contributions are welcome. Feel free to open an issue or a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details