Ensure labels exist in a GitHub repository#

I wanted to ensure that when this template repository was used to create a new repo that repo would have a specific set of labels.

Here’s the workflow I came up with, saved as .github/workflows/ensure_labels.yml:

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name: Ensure labels
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on: [push]
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jobs:
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  ensure_labels:
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    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
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    steps:
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    - name: Create labels
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      uses: actions/github-script@v6
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      with:
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        script: |
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          try {
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            await github.rest.issues.createLabel({
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              ...context.repo,
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              name: 'captions'
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            });
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            await github.rest.issues.createLabel({
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              ...context.repo,
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              name: 'whisper'
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            });
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          } catch(e) {
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            // Ignore if labels exist already
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          }

This creates captions and whisper labels, if they do not yet exist.

It’s wrapped in a try/catch so that if the labels exist already (as they will on subsequent runs) the error can be ignored.

Note that you need to use await ... inside that try/catch block or exceptions thrown by those methods will still cause the action run to fail.

The ...context.repo trick saves on having to pass owner and repo explicitly.