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Cover image for Jazz up the code blocks in Github Issues
Mithun Kamath
Mithun Kamath

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Jazz up the code blocks in Github Issues

My Workflow

My Github Action is named Carbonate

Diving right in - Let's see if you can figure out what my Action does. Here's what your issue(s) look like BEFORE my Action takes over:

Before Action

and here is what they will look like after my action has run:

After Action

Spot the difference?

The workflow of my Github action is as follows:

  • It extracts the code block for the issue description / comment and generates beautiful images for them
  • It then inserts the image at the code block
  • It also retains the original code block as a collapsed detail in the same issue / comment body

Additionally, it

  • Allows formatting the code using Prettier and controlling the styling of the images generated
  • Supports the following events:
    • issue_comment:
      • types: created
    • issues:
      • types: opened

Submission Category:

I am submitting this Action under the Phone Friendly category. Although I am of the opinion that Maintainer Must-Haves would also have been a good category to submit under (Why wouldn't any code maintainer not want to have some gorgeous looking images of the code??), I am submitting this for the Phone Friendly category.

On mobile devices, reading the code in its text form can be a difficult task. It puts the responsibility on the author to format their code correctly, to specify the language of the fenced code block in the markdown and to adhere to any guidelines the project may have. This could lead to discouragement of reporting the issues and potential embarrassments.

Automatically formatting the code for the author eliminates this hurdle. Having (oh-my-god-they-are-so-beautiful) images generated for the code allows folks to easily read and view the code in its entirety. No more scrolling - only zooming, which is an easier task.

The benefits of this Action for mobile device users are clear and hence I submit it under the Phone Friendly category.

Yaml File or Link to Code

GitHub logo callmekatootie / carbonate

Github Action to format fenced code blocks in github issues as images. Originally created as part of DEV Github Actions hackathon: https://dev.to/callmekatootie/jazz-up-the-code-blocks-in-github-issues-52e6

Carbonate

Jazz up the code blocks in your issues. Generate beautiful images for them to make it easier to follow. Meant to be used as a Github Action.

BEFORE

AFTER

First appeared at: https://stackoverflow.com/a/61269447/2104976

Features

The workflow of this action is as follows:

  • It extracts the code block for the issue description / comment and generates images for them
  • It then inserts the image at the code block
  • It also retains the original code block as a collapsed detail in the same issue / comment body

Additionally, it

  • Allows formatting the code using Prettier and controlling the styling of the images generated
  • Supports the following events
    • issue_comment
      • types: created
    • issues
      • types: opened

Not supported (yet)

  • Generating images from multiple code blocks in the same issue description / comment
  • Generating images after the issue description / comment has been edited

Advantages of code images over code blocks

  • Easy to view and…

Additional Resources / Info

I only now created this Action and thus there are no repositories that are currently using it (at the time of writing this). However, I am using the Action in my Action's own repository - so feel free to get a demo of it in action by creating issues here. (Don't forget to include fenced code blocks in your comments)

I am making use of Carbon to generate the images and the images themselves are hosted on Imgur. The code is optionally formatted using Prettier.

  • Cover Photo by Joshua Aragon on Unsplash
  • The content of the issue in the screenshots were actually borrowed from here. The answer helped me in fixing an issue with my code and I found it suitable to demo.

Top comments (2)

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developerkaren profile image
Karen Efereyan

Congrats Mithun. I have no previous idea about Github actions so I don't understand this

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callmekatootie profile image
Mithun Kamath

Thank you!