At my company, we have a CLI which allows our customers to upload data to our backend solution. The CLI runs on PR changes within a job. Let's assume the uploaded data looks like this:
{
name: "John",
age: 20,
}
Once the upload is completed, I'd like to create a comment on the PR with to following body:
John is 20 years old.
I've found the following ways to do this:
GitHub App (a bot)
GitHub OAuth App
Personal Access Token
GITHUB_TOKEN
GitHub App
The GitHub App needs to do the following things:
Fetch the data via a user-specific API key
Create a comment
I already created a comment via a bot, but I have no clue how to fetch the data.
As far as my understanding goes, I'd like other users to be able to install this GitHub app from the marketplace to work out of the box. From the ProBot Docs I understand that the bot operates on a webhook basis. Meaning I need to subscribe to a 'job completed' event (not sure if that's the correct name but I think you get the idea) and then fetch the data via a user-specific API we are providing on our platform. However, I see no way for the user of our App to configure an API key (or any form of secret) so the bot can make authenticated requests to our endpoints.
I'd prefer to use GitHub App because the comment coming from the bot would have our company branding and also an indicator that this comment has been created by the integration.
OAuth App
I already tested this by using Postman, however, the comment looks like it's coming from a specific user. Therefore, it has no company branding and it's not clear that an integration created the comment. However, the great part is that we could integrate this with our application, so our backend could create the comment once the data is received.
What I like about this approach is that we also need to implement such a feature for GitLab, Azure, etc, and using OAuth likely scales well with the other providers in comparison to the GitHub app, which is GitHub-specific.
Personal Access Token
Works pretty much like the OAuth App, but instead of our backend creating the comment, the comment is created by the CLI (and the access token is passed into the CLI). However, I think this approach is a bit sketchy.
GITHUB_TOKEN
While I haven't tried this yet, I assume that the token has limited but sufficient permissions to create a comment. As of now, I don't know what the comment will look like, but I think we can rather safely pass this into the CLI to create the comment from there. Since the permissions are limited and the token is invalidated after the workflow I see limited risk for the user of our CLI (and services).
Edit: The comment is coming from the github-actions bot, which is not the branding we are looking for, but it's clear that the comment has been created by the integration.
Questions
What's the best way to accomplish what I am trying?
Is there any way I can make this work with GitHub Apps (aka bots)?
Related
EDIT: See comments on Schwern's answer for what I'm looking for in general. It doesn't have to be exactly what I'm asking for in the question
I have a web app which is an editor. I would like users to be able to give me a GitHub file URL, my app would automatically load in the file from GitHub, and then I make a process for them which is as easy as possible to submit that change to GitHub again. Ideally the user wouldn't need to save / upload a file or do any copy/pasting.
GitHub has a URL scheme where you can go to an "Edit" page for a file, make your changes, and then create a PR or create a commit (depending on what you would like to do and your permissions). This is an example:
https://github.com/rails/rails/edit/main/README.md
Looking at the HTML for the form I see that some of the fields have names associated. Using those names I can auto-fill the commit title and description:
https://github.com/rails/rails/edit/main/README.md?message=foo&description=bar
But I can't find a way to automatically fill in/replace the actual contents of the file. Is there a way?
I realize that for some browsers URLs can only be so long (maybe that's not true anymore?), so maybe this isn't perfect. I'd also be open to other suggestions on how to accomplish what I'm looking for.
Don't try to do this via web scraping, it's fragile and slow. Use the Github API.
Specifically, you'd get access via OAuth, get the file, let the user edit it, and then send the edited version.
There is no way to do exactly what you want. The ideal tool for this job is an OAuth App. However, creating one with the GitHub API requires that you store a client ID and a client secret, and there is no secure way to store the client secret in a frontend-only app.
Therefore, you'll need to create a backend to create the OAuth app so that you can issue credentials necessary to use the API on behalf of the user or to push data into the repository via the standard protocols.
As Schwern mentioned, you should not try to do this by driving the GitHub web interface. That isn't a stable interface and may break at any time.
I am facing the challenge to request the Bing Ads API to get a couple of metrics from it.
I am using Apache Airflow DAGs hosted on a remote Kubernetes cluster to do so. It is a nice way to automate and schedule tasks.
Now, the documentation is rather light on the point of gaining access to the API.
I have followed this https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/advertising/guides/authentication-oauth-identity-platform?view=bingads-13#registerapplication
and the official SDK docs https://github.com/BingAds/BingAds-Python-SDK/.
I am failing at authenticating when querying, since I am lacking a couple of pieces of information.
When authenticating using the "refresh token" and "redirect URI", I do not have either. (Class OAuthWebAuthCodeGrant here: https://github.com/BingAds/BingAds-Python-SDK/blob/294d01eea57d80ba381a42cde8d006fc318af056/bingads/authorization.py#L566)
When using a different method (Class OAuthDesktopMobileAuthCodeGrant here: https://github.com/BingAds/BingAds-Python-SDK/blob/294d01eea57d80ba381a42cde8d006fc318af056/bingads/authorization.py#L532), I fail w/
AADSTS700016: Application with identifier '<someidentifier>' was not found in the directory '<somethingelse>'. This can happen if the application has not been installed by the administrator of the tenant or consented to by any user in the tenant. You may have sent your authentication request to the wrong tenant.
Thank you very much in advance! If you need more details, let me know!
Also great documentation in general, if I can make it more "newb"-friendly, let me know!
Edit1:
Sadly, while there has been some traffic to this question, nobody seems to be able to answer.
I will specify the set up a bit further.
We use Airflow DAGs to request daily updates from the API. For this, we need to authenticate. The authentication comes from a "new device" every time, since the code runs on a k8s cluster which allocates the jobs dynamically to it's pods.
For authentication, we ventured into different solutions, but all require some form of human interaction to get the refresh token into the DAG.
Is there any solution which allows for a hands-free deamon like many-server-to-server communication?
This link sheds some light on what we are looking for: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/scenario-daemon-app-registration#api-permissions---app-permissions-and-admin-consent
Sadly, the Bing Ads API does not show up there.
What key piece of information are we missing?
Bing Ads, like Google Ads, uses OAuth for its API.
If you reference the Getting Started page, it mentions that you need a developer token, complete with links.
You can follow these steps to get a developer token for production.
Sign in with Super Admin credentials at the Microsoft Advertising Developer Portal account tab.
Choose the user that you want associated with the developer token. Typically an application only needs one universal token regardless how many users will be supported.
Click on the Request Token button.
Regarding your specific scenario--an application running in the cloud without an interface--you should know that OAuth requires you to interact with it to set things up. So run your app locally ONCE, or at least the getting_started code from your language's walkthrough: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/advertising/guides/walkthrough-desktop-application-python?view=bingads-13
Running it locally will go through the authentication process with your browser and generate a refresh token (in the file refresh.txt by default). Store this file with your code. It will have to be on the server that's making the request, and since it's in Kubernetes, you'll have to keep it with your container file.
I’ve built a google action that talks to my bespoke web Api.
The actions code currently has personal details hard coded into it. I need to make it so that when someone uses it for the first time it asks them for a username password and URL.
Is there a way to do this? Or maybe there is a way for a user to add those details to there google account in some way that the action can read them.
Alternatively is there a way to publish an action so only specific users can access it?
In general, asking for a username and password is a bad approach for Actions, for several reasons, and asking for a URL can be quite a mess. Particularly if you're expecting the user to access the Action via voice or a device that doesn't support a keyboard.
The better approach is to use Account Linking to connect their Google Account to an account they have created on your system. If you need additional one-time configuration information, you can have them provide this information for their account via a webapp, store it in a datastore of some sort, and then access it when they contact your webhook via the Action.
There is no way to have the Assistant enforce access to a production Action. You can publish an Alpha release to up to 20 accounts, but this is still treated as a "test" version.
Using this link I can see that my (tonylampada) id on github is 218821
https://api.github.com/users/tonylampada
How could I do the opposite? Given the user id = 218821, what's the username?
Update
Answering nulltoken here because it's a long story and it won't fit in a comment.
FreedomSponsors is a django application that uses django-social-auth to enable login with Github (and others).
(You should check it out, btw, please see the about page in the blog :-)
Django-social-auth has a configuration flag that allows the application to store the github username on the database.
A few days ago I deployed a new version of FS with github login enabled, but with "storeGithubUsername" set to false.
A few users registered their github accounts, and now the database has their github ids, but not their usernames.
You can se in my profile that I have github as a "connected account" but there's no link to my github page.
I need it to make the link point to https://github.com/tonylampada
I'm ready to deploy a new version that fixes this, by setting the "storeGithubUsername" (that's not what it is called, I'm just simplifying here) to true.
But I'd like to patch the database with the already github-registered users. I have their github ids, but not their github usernames.
We need to do this on Gitter to deal with the situation where a user has changed their username on GitHub and we get a 404 response when querying their old username.
Here's an undocumented endpoint, so use as your own peril, but it does work for now.
Use the endpoint: https://api.github.com/user/:id, where :id is the ID of the user.
Similar endpoints exist for repos and orgs, at
https://api.github.com/repositories/:id and https://api.github.com/organizations/:id respectively.
Note that the new repository redirects preview API only supports repositories, not renamed users or organizations. In fact, the HTTP 301 redirect actually points to https://api.github.com/repositories/:id, so there's a good chance that these "ID" endpoints may in fact become official soon.
There's no documented feature, nor undocumented ones that I know of, that expose the retrieval of the username from the id. From the GitHub API consumer perspective, the user id is an "implementation detail". The real key is the username.
From what I understand, you only require a batch of usernames given a list of ids. And this would be a one time only request, not a permanent need.
As your request seems legit and limited in its scope, you might get this answer directly from GitHub support by dropping them an email at support#github.com.
Indeed, xpaulbettsx, a GitHubber, even tweeted about this:
Support# is good for Anything you want to tell GitHub - bugs, features, high 5s; everything but security which go to security#
By the time I answer this question, the method that works is:
https://api.github.com/user/USER_ID
Remark: It is similar to what Andrew shared in 2015; you just have to remove the colon in the URL he shared.
I'm developing a small CMS in PHP and we're putting on social integration.
The content is changed by a single administrator who as right for publishing news, events and so on...
I'd to add this feature, when the admin publishes something it's already posted on facebook wall. I'm not very familiar with facebook php SDK, and i'm a little bit confused about it.
If (make it an example) 10 different sites are using my CMS, do I have to create 10 different facebook application? (let's assume the 10 websites are all in different domains and servers)
2nd, is there a way for authenticating with just PHP (something like sending username&password directly) so that the user does not need to be logged on facebook?
thanks
You might want to break up your question in to smaller understandable units. Its very difficult to understand what you are driving at.
My understanding of your problem could be minimal, but here goes...
1_ No you do not create 10 different facebook application. Create a single facebook application and make it a service entry point. So that all your cms sites could talk to this one site to interact with facebook. ( A REST service layer).
2_ Facebook api does not support username and password authentication. They only support oauth2.0. Although Oauth is not trivial, but since they have provided library for that, implementing authentication is pretty trivial.
Please read up on http://developers.facebook.com/docs/.
Its really easy and straight forward and well explained.
Your question is so vague and extensive that it cannot be answered well here.
If you experience any specific implementation problems, this is the right place.
However to answer atleast a part of your question:
The most powerful tool when working with facebook applications is the Graph API.
Its principle is very simple. You can do almonst any action on behalf of any user or application. You have to generate a token first that identifies the user and the proper permissions. Those tokens can be made "permanent" so you can do background tasks. Usually they are only active a very short time so you can perform actions while interacting with the user. The process of generating tokens involves the user so that he/she has to confirm the privileges you are asking for.
For websites that publish something automatically you would probably generate a permanent token one time that is active as long as you remove the app in your privacy settings.
Basically yuo can work with any application on any website. There is no limitation. However there are two ways of generating tokens. One involves on an additional request and one is done client side, which is bound to one domain oyu specifiedin your apps settings.
Addendum:
#ArtoAle
you are right about every app beeing assighend to exactly one domain. however once you obtained a valid token it doesnt matter from where or who you use it within the graph api.
let me expalin this a little bit:
it would make no sense since it is you doing the request. there is no such thing as "where the request is coming from". of course there is the "referer" header information, but it can be freely specified and is not used in any context of this.
the domain you enter in your apps settings only restricts where facebook redirects the user to.
why?
this ensures that some bad guy cannot set up a website on any domain and let the user authorize an app and get an access token with YOUR application.
so this setting ensures that the user and the access token are redirected back to YOUR site and not to another bad site.
but there is an alternative. if you use the control flow for desktop applications you don't get an access token right after the user has been redirected back. you get a temporary SESSION-TOKEN that you can EXCCHANGE for an access token. this exchange is done server side over the REST api and requires your application secret. So at this point it is ensured that it is YOU who gets the token.
This method can be done on any domain or in case of desktop applications on no domain at all.
This is a quote from the faceboo docs:
To convert sessions, send a POST
request to
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/exchange_sessions
with a comma-separated list of
sessions you want to convert:
curl client_id=your_app_id \
-F client_secret=your_app_secret \
-F sessions=2.DbavCpzL6Yc_XGEI0Ip9GA__.3600.1271649600-12345,2.aBdC...
\
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/exchange_sessions
The response from the request is a
JSON array of OAuth access tokens in
the same order as the sessions given:
[ {
"access_token": "...",
"expires": 1271649600, }, ... ]
However you don't need this method as its a bit more complex. For your use case i would suggest using a central point of authorization.
So you would specify your ONE domain as a redirect url. This domain is than SHARED between your websites. there you can obtain the fully valid access token and seamlessly redirect the user back to your specific project website and pass along the access token.
This way you can use the traditional easy authentication flow that is probably also more future proof.
The fact remains. Once the access token is generated you can perform any action from any domain, there is no difference as ther is literally no "domain" where the request is coming from (see above).
apart from that, if you want some nice javascript features to work - like the comments box or like button, you need to setup up open graph tags correctly.
if you have some implementation problems or as you said "domain errors" please describe them more clearly, include the steps you made and if possible an error message.