githubbot

GitHub Bot

A Keybase chat bot that notifies a channel when an event happens on a GitHub repository (issues, pull requests, commits, etc.).

Prerequisites

In order to run the GitHub bot, you will need

• a running MySQL database in order to store GitHub OAuth tokens, user preferences, and channel subscriptions
• the app ID, app name, client ID, and client secret from a GitHub app
• a secret string, used to authenticate webhooks from GitHub. Remember to update the webhook secret on your Github app to this string!
• the private key .pem file from your GitHub app

Running

1. On your SQL instance, create a database for the bot, and run db.sql to set up the tables.
2. Build the bot using Go 1.13+, like such (in this directory):

   go install .
   

3. The GitHub bot sets itself up to serve HTTP requests on /githubbot plus a prefix indicating what the URLs will look like. The HTTP server runs on port 8080. You can configure nginx or any other reverse proxy software to route to this port and path. Make sure the callback URL for your GitHub app is set to http://<your web server>/githubbot/oauth, and the webhook URL is set to http://<your web server>/githubbot/webhook.
4. To start the GitHub bot, run a command like this:

   $GOPATH/bin/githubbot --http-prefix 'http://<your web server>:8080' --dsn 'root@/githubbot' --app-name 'my-bot' --app-id 12345 --client-id '<OAuth client ID>' --client-secret '<OAuth client secret>' --secret '<your secret string>' --private-key-path '/path/to/bot.private-key.pem'
   

5. Run githubbot --help for more options.

Helpful Tips

• Remember to configure the permissions for your GitHub app. The bot expects read-only access to the Repository Permissions:

      - checks
      - contents
      - issues
      - pull requests
      - commit statuses
  

  As well as the webhook events for:

      - check runs
      - pushes
      - statuses
      - issues
      - pull requests
  

• If you accidentally run the bot under your own username and wish to clear the ! commands, run the following:

  keybase chat api -m '{"method": "clearcommands"}'
  

• You can optionally save your GitHub app details inside your bot account's private KBFS folder. To do this, create a credentials.json file in /keybase/private/<YourGitHubBot> (or the equivalent KBFS path on your system) that matches the following format:

  {
    "app_name": "your URL-safe GitHub app name",
    "app_id": 12345, // your GitHub app ID
    "client_id": "your GitHub OAuth client ID here",
    "client_secret": "your GitHub OAuth client secret here",
    "webhook_secret": "your secret here"
  }
  

  If you have KBFS running, you can now run the bot without providing the --client-id, --client-secret, --app-id, --app-name, and --secret command line options.

• You can store your private key file in KBFS by saving it in a file named bot.private-key.pem and omitting the --private-key-path argument.

Docker

There are a few complications running a Keybase chat bot, and it is likely easiest to deploy using Docker. See https://hub.docker.com/r/keybaseio/client for our preferred client image to get started.