GitHub Services

How the services work

1. A post-receive background job is submitted when someone pushes their commits to GitHub
2. If the repository the commits belong to has any "Service Hooks" setup, the job makes a request to http://services-server/service_name/push with the following data:
   • params[:payload] containing all of the commit data (the same data you get using the API)
   • params[:data] containing the service data (username, password, room, etc)
3. Sinatra (github-services.rb) processes the request (twitters your data, says something in campfire, posts it to lighthouse, etc)
4. Rinse and repeat

Steps to contributing

Start by reading the Contributing Guidelines.

1. Fork the project

2. Create a new file in /services/ called service_name.rb, using the following template:

   class Service::ServiceName < Service
     def receive_push
     end
   end

3. Vendor any external gems your code relies on, and make sure it is specified in the Gemfile.

4. Add documentation to docs/service_name (refer to the others for guidance)

5. Send a pull request from your fork to github/github-services

6. Once it's accepted we'll add any new necessary data fields to the GitHub front-end so people can start using your addition.

Patches including tests are required

A huge thanks goes out to our many contributors!

Running the server locally

1. [sudo] gem install hpricot
2. git clone git://github.com/github/github-services.git
3. cd github-services
4. ruby github-services.rb

• Bugs in the code should be filed under the Issues tab
• Problems with the service hooks can be filed here

How to test your service

You can test your service in a ruby irb console:

1. Run rake console to start irb.

2. Instantiate your Service:

   svc = Service::MyService.new(:push,
     # Hash of configuration information.
     {'token' => 'abc'},
     # Hash of payload.
     {'blah' => 'payload!'})
   
   svc.receive_push

3. The third argument is optional if you just want to use the sample payload.

   svc = Service::MyService.new(:push,
     # Hash of configuration information.
     {'token' => 'abc'})
   
   svc.receive_push

You can also use this one-liner in the shell instead:

bundle exec ruby -r config/load.rb -r services/myservice.rb -e \
  "Service::MyService.new(:push, {'foo' => 'bar'}).receive_push"

You can also test your hook with the Sinatra web service:

1. Start the github-services Sinatra server with ruby github-services.rb. By default, it runs on port 8080.
2. Edit the docs/github_payload file as necessary to test your service. (Usually just editing the "data" values but leaving the "payload" alone.)
3. Send the docs/github_payload file to your service by calling: ./script/deliver_payload [service-name]

Other hook types

The default hook for a service is push. You may wish to have services respond to other event types, like pull_request or issues. The full list may be found in service.rb. Unless your service specifies default_events <list_of_types>, only the push hook will be called, see service.rb#default_events.

To make use of these additional types, your service will either need to define receive_<type> (like receive_pull_request_review_comment) or a generic receive_event.

You can read more about the Hooks in the API Documentation.