JSON in body of request

[aarontwf]

Hey, just wondering how JSON is supposed to be sent?
Tried a few things but getting different errors back.

This is the API request I'm trying https://docs.github.com/en/rest/reference/issues#create-a-label

    steps:
      - uses: octokit/[email protected]
        with:
          route: POST /repos/${{ github.repository }}/labels
          body: "'\\'{\"name\":\"React ${{ github.event.ref }}\"}\\''"
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Error: end of the stream or a document separator is expected (1:4)

 1 | '\'{"name":"React aarontwf-patch-2"}\''
--------^

---

body: "''{\"name\":\"React ${{ github.event.ref }}\"}''"

Error: end of the stream or a document separator is expected (1:3)

 1 | ''{"name":"React aarontwf-patch-1"}''
-------^

---

body: "'{\"name\":\"React ${{ github.event.ref }}\"}'"

Error: Invalid request.

"name" wasn't supplied.

---

body: '{"name":"React ${{ github.event.ref }}"}'

Error: Invalid request.

"name" wasn't supplied.

[dsoegijono]

Try putting it in with directly instead of body:

steps:
      - uses: octokit/[email protected]
        with:
          route: POST /repos/${{ github.repository }}/labels
          name: React ${{ github.event.ref }}
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

I ran into the same issue for another endpoint. I think the documentation is not very clear on how to pass payload.

[dcarbone]

For anybody else who comes across this, if you wish to make a request with a JSON body containing nested values it must be done something like this:

    steps:
      - name: 'Construct Github Environment create / update request'
        id: gh_env_req
        run: |
          _reviewers_json="$(cat <<EOF
          [ { "type": "Team", "id": 0 } ]
          EOF
          )"
          
          echo "::set-output name=reviewers_json::${_reviewers_json}"

      - name: Create / Update Github environment
        uses: octokit/[email protected]
        with:
          route: 'PUT /repos/{repo_path}/environments/{env_name}'
          repo_path: '${{ github.repository }}'
          env_name: my-env
          reviewers: '${{ steps.gh_env_req.outputs.reviewers_json }}'

If your request is static, you should probably be able to define the json contents of the nested field directly into the with: block, but for my specific use-case the json is actually constructed with the output of a subsequent api call to get the ID of the reviewer's team, thus necessitating an additional step.

The heredoc syntax and spaces between json tokens are purely for readability and are not required.

[timrogers]

@dcarbone 👋🏻 Would you be up for making a PR to improve the documentation? I'm sure other people will run into issues like this.

[dcarbone]

Sure, i'll work on one in a bit.

[Nomango]

Constructing a JSON body in with can be challenging. But I have found a simpler way to invoke the GitHub API. actions/github-script looks pretty good.

    steps:
      - id: get_release_notes
        uses: actions/github-script@v7
        with:
          # see syntax on https://octokit.github.io/rest.js/v20
          script: |
            const { data } = await github.rest.repos.generateReleaseNotes({
              owner: '${{ github.repository_owner }}',
              repo: '${{ github.event.repository.name }}',
              tag_name: 'v1.0.0',
            });
            core.setOutput('data', data);

      - name: Show release note
        run: 'echo "${{ fromJSON(steps.get_release_notes.outputs.data).body }}"'