Issue Forms Parser

Convert issue form responses to JSON

About

This package can be used to parse GitHub issues into machine-readable JSON for processing. In particular, it is designed to work with issue forms to perform basic transformations on the issue body, resulting in a consistent JSON output.

Issues submitted using issue forms use a structured Markdown format. So long as the issue body is not heavily modified by the user, we can reliably parse the issue body into a JSON object.

Installation

npm i @github/issue-parser

Example

Here is a simple example of how to use this package in your project.

import { parseIssue } from '@github/issue-parser'

const issue = parseIssue('<issue body>', '<template>')

Assuming the issue and template look like these examples:

• Example Issue Markdown
• Example Template YAML

The resulting issue object will look like the following:

{
  name: 'this-thing',
  nickname: 'thing',
  color: ['blue'],
  shape: ['square'],
  sounds: ['re', 'mi'],
  topics: [],
  description: "This is a description.\n\nIt has multiple lines.\n\nIt's pretty cool!",
  notes: '- Note\n- Another note\n- Lots of notes',
  code: 'const thing = new Thing()\nthing.doThing()',
  'code-string': 'thing.toString()',
  'is-thing': {
    selected: ['Yes'],
    unselected: ['No']
  },
  'is-thing-useful': {
    selected: ['Sometimes'],
    unselected: ['Yes', 'No']
  },
  'read-team': 'IssueOps-Demo-Readers',
  'write-team': 'IssueOps-Demo-Writers'
}

Usage

parseIssue

This is the main function of the package. It takes two arguments:

• issue: string - The body of the issue to be parsed
• template: string - (Optional) The issue form template used to create the issue
• options?: { slugify?: boolean } - (Optional) Additional parsing options to use when processing the issue body

If the template value is provided, the package will attempt to transform the issue response values into different types based on the type property of the specific field in the template. If the template value is omitted, all parsed values will be returned as strings. For information on the transformations that are applied, see the Transformations section.

Parsing Options

• slugify: boolean - If set to true, any parsed keys that are not found in the issue forms template (if provided) will be converted to slugs using the slugify package. Otherwise, the original header value will be used as the object key.

parseTemplate(template?: string)

Parses an issue form template and returns an object. This can be used to match form responses in the issue body with the fields, so that you can perform additional validation.

When parsing an issue and the associated form template, this package will attempt to match field IDs with response values. If a match is found, the field ID will be used in the parsed object keys (instead of the header value from the markdown response). If no match is found, the header text is used as the object key.

For example, if you have the following issue form template:

name: Example Request
description: Submit an example request
title: '[Request] Example'

body:
  - type: input
    id: name
    attributes:
      label: The Name of the Thing
      description: The name of the thing you want to create.
      placeholder: this-is-the-thing
    validations:
      required: true

And the following issue body:

### The Name of the Thing

this-thing

### The Nickname of the Thing

thing

The resulting parsed issue would be:

{
  // Uses the ID value from the issue form template as the key
  "name": "this-thing",
  // Uses the original header value from the issue body
  "The Nickname of the Thing": "thing"
}

Transformations

The following transformations will take place for responses, depending on the input type. The type is inferred from the issue form template. For information on each specific type, see Syntax for GitHub's form schema.

Single Line

Type: input

Before:

This is a response

After (no change):

This is a response

Multiline

Type: textarea

Note

Empty lines are preserved in multiline responses.

Before:

First line :D

Third line!

After:

First line :D\n\nThird line!

Dropdown Selections

Type: dropdown

Before:

red, blue, green

After:

["red", "blue", "green"]

Checkboxes

Type: checkboxes

Before:

- [x] Pick me!
- [ ] Don't pick me D:

After:

{
  "selected": ["Pick me!"],
  "unselected": ["Don't pick me D:"]
}

Omitting Inputs

In the following situations, an input will be omitted from the output JSON:

Scenario	Example
Invalid Heading	## This is invalid
Empty Heading	###
	This is a value
No Value	### This is a heading
	### This is another
	This is a value

Normally, if a form is submitted with empty field(s), they will be included in the issue body as one of the following, depending on the input type in the form template.

Type	No Response
dropdown	None
input	_No response_
textarea	_No response_

### Dropdown Field

None

### Input or Textarea Field

_No response_

### Checkboxes Field

- [ ] Item A
- [ ] Item B

These will be converted to one of the following, based on the type of input specified in the issue form template:

Type	Output
checkboxes	{ "selected": [], "unselected": []}
dropdown	[]
input	undefined
textarea	undefined