Underway

Underway is a Ruby gem that helps developers quickly prototype GitHub Apps.

Underway consists of some convenience wrappers for the GitHub REST API, with a particular focus on generating credentials for accessing installation resources associated with a GitHub App. Access tokens are cached using Sqlite3 for convenience.

If you like rapid prototyping with Sinatra you can use the included Sinatra routes, which allow you to quickly get access to a JWT or access token for your App and its installations. Starting with a Sinatra application is a fast way to build a GitHub App prototype and explore how GitHub Apps work with the GitHub REST API.

This project adheres to Semantic Versioning. All notable changes are documented in the CHANGELOG.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "underway", "~> 1.1"

And then run:

bundle

Or install it globally with:

gem install underway

First, follow the documentation to create a GitHub App.

When you're done creating a new App you should have:

• Your GitHub App's ID (an integer)
• A private key file (.pem)
• A webhook secret (optional)

Make a copy of the config.json.example file in a location readable by your application and edit the file to match your GitHub App's settings.

At its core, Underway is just a Ruby library and can be used in virtually any application. To get started quickly and test out your new GitHub App you might want to use the included Sinatra routes. A complete example Sinatra application is included with Underway and shows how to configure the gem and include the informational routes.

If you would prefer to configure Underway manually, or are not building a Sinatra application, do something like this:

require "underway"

Underway::Settings.configure do |config|
  # Note: config.app_root is no longer supported as of version 2.0. Just pass
  # the absolute or relative path to the configuration file.
  config.config_filename = "./config.json"
end

You can also configure Underway by individually setting its configuration attributes:

require "underway"

Underway::Settings.configure do |config|
  config.app_id = "some-app-id"
  config.client_id = "some-client-id"
  config.client_secret = "some-client-secret"
  config.database_url = "/some/db/url"
  config.github_api_host = "https://api.github.com"
  config.webhook_secret = "some-webhook-secret"
  config.private_key = "my-pem"
end

The most useful part of Underway for interacting with GitHub Apps is found in the Underway::Api class.

For example, right out of the box you can generate a JWT for your App:

Underway::Api.generate_jwt

You can get an access token for a given installation of your App:

installations = Underway::Api.invoke("app/installations")
access_token = Underway::Api.installation_token(id: installations.first.id)

Access tokens are cached, to save API calls. When an access token has expired a new one will be generated and cached.

To get a list of repositories to which an installation of your App has access, try this:

installations = Underway::Api.invoke("app/installations")
access_token = Underway::Api.installation_token(id: installations.first.id)
repositories = Underway::Api.invoke("installation/repositories", headers: { authorization: "token #{access_token}" })