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githubjiragithub-webhook

Pass both pull request status and commit data via webhook

I was working on automating an integration between Jira and Github where a ticket transitions its state (in progress -> code review -> done) through a workflow based on the status / lifecycle of a pull request.

Pull request created: ticket transitions to code review state
Pull request merged: ticket transitions to done state

The issue I'm having is how to send enough data for the Jira automation process. Developers commit messages include ticket ID's (git commit -m 'ID-22, <commit message here>) that I am looking for, I also need to know pull request data to know the status of the PR.

When configuring the webhook for this, I selected to receive events for both pull requests as well as pushes to be sent to my Jira automation workflow.

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The events are sent individually, which is the main issue as I need both events to apply the ticket automation. For instance this is the commit webhook, which successfully found the ticket from a commit, however pull request data is missing so there was no action it could take.

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The very next event is the pull request event which cannot find the ticket because it lacks commits in the payload.

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Is there an event that I can use that includes data about commits and PR's? I would prefer to avoid setting up a bot / server to merge these together if possible.
I could technically make the pull request event work (by itself) if the branch name included the ticket, however that requires a change in process + a lot of the time pull requests will include fixes for multiple tickets, branch name strategy is too 1:1. Ideally I'd like to discover tickets from the commit messages

Thanks for reading!

Solution

  • My experience with using GitHub APIs: commits and pull requests are not associated to each other. So a pull request event has no context of any commits, vice versa.

    That being said, it's still doable:

    Use "pull requests" event, which fires off every time there is an event of the pull request itself, such as opened, synchronized (new commit), ready for review, etc.

    Then:

    Option 1. With the pull request info, query GitHub API to get commit info: https://developer.github.com/v3/pulls/#list-commits-on-a-pull-request.

    Option 2. Not only let developers mention work ID in their commits, let them mention work ID in PR title as well, that way you don't need to make a separate API call, since PR title is included in pull request event payload (https://developer.github.com/webhooks/event-payloads/#pull_request)