rseng / rse-action

GitHub action to generate web interface for a research software encyclopedia

Research Software Encyclopedia Action

If you have a research software encyclopedia flat file "database" stored in a version controlled repository, you might want to export a web interface to GitHub pages for users to explore it. This is the purpose of this action. The portal currently looks like this:

And a repository like this:

An automated generation at rseng/software can be viewed here. The interface also exports a static "API" so the repositories can be programatically obtained. See https://rseng.github.io/software/data.json for an example.

Quick Start

To use the action, you can specify this repository (a branch or preferably a release) and then a path to some custom urls.txt files to include. For example, here is how to generate the interface for an external repository, and upload it as an artifact.

name: generate-web

on:
  pull_request: []

jobs:
  GenerateStaticWeb:
    name: Generate static web
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Generate Static Web

        # Important! Update to release https://github.com/rseng/rse-action/releases
        uses: rseng/rse-action@master
        with:        
          repo: https://github.com/rseng/software
          config: rse.ini
          export_dir: docs
          force: true
 
      - name: Upload data as artifact
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2-preview
        with:
          name: static-web
          path: docs/

Note that if you want to export for GitHub pages, you'll need to edit the prefix and host that is rendered into the static files. See examples for this file and others with more detailed comments.

important you must define a prefix if you want to export to a GitHub pages that isn't served at an organizations primary GitHub pages, and a host regardless.

Inputs

name	description	default	required
repo	repository url or relative path to root of repo.	.	no
config	path to rse.ini config file to discover repository.	rse.ini	no
export_dir	path to export directory.	docs/	no
force	If export directory exists, force overwrite.	unset (false)	no
issues_repo	Repository to post taxonomy/criteria annotations	https://github.com/rseng/software	no
prefix	A prefix for static export (for GitHub pages)	/	no
host	The hostname (and optional port) for GitHub pages	unset	no, but suggested