Slate Documenation Builder Action

GitHub action to build repositories Markdown files using the slate framework

Table of Contents

• Slate Documenation Builder Action
  • Getting Started
  • Using as GitHub Action
    • Settings for v2.0.0+ release
      • Advanced configuration
        • Get the Result
  • Complete Workflow Example

Getting Started

The docker image can be used to locally build your markdown files. For this you need, first of all, to build the docker image:

docker build -t decathlon/slate-builder .

Once built run the container using the following command:

docker run -it --rm -v <md files folder>:/usr/src/doc decathlon/slate-builder

The slate build result will be stored into the build subdir of <md files folder>.

Using as GitHub Action

Settings for v2.0.0+ release

Create a file into your root project directory: .github/workflows/slate-builder-action.yml:

on: push
name: Create Slate Documentation on Push
jobs:
  slate-documentation:
    runs-on: ubuntu-18.04
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@master
    - name: Build documentation
      uses: docker://decathlon/slate-builder-action:2.0.0
      env:
        DOC_BASE_FOLDER = "."

The DOC_BASE_FOLDER environement variable is the path, in your gitHub repository, containing the Markdown files you want to build as Slate website.

Advanced configuration

You can override the default Slate template, providing a repository containing your custom slate template.

on: push
name: Create Slate Documentation on Push
jobs:
  slate-documentation:
    runs-on: ubuntu-18.04
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@master
    - name: Build documentation
      uses: docker://decathlon/slate-builder-action:2.0.0
      env:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        DOC_BASE_FOLDER = "."
        TEMPLATE_REPO = "decathlon/custom-slate"

The GITHUB_TOKEN secrets variable contains the Private Access Token. This secret is mandatory if you want to access to a private repository but you can leave it empty if the template you want to use is opensource.

Get the Result

The result is built into DOC_BASE_FOLDER/build folder. You have to chain this action with one taking care about deployment, delivery, or whatever you want to do with your built documentation. To simplify the export, the result is zipped into DOC_BASE_FOLDER/documentation.zip. You can disable the zipping function providing ZIP_BUILD=false as environment variable.

on: push
name: Create Slate Documentation on Push
jobs:
  slate-documentation:
    runs-on: ubuntu-18.04
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@master
    - name: Build documentation
      uses: docker://decathlon/slate-builder-action:2.0.0
      env:
        DOC_BASE_FOLDER = "."
        ZIP_BUILD = "false"

Complete Workflow Example

Ih this example the workflow is started if we are on the master branch and an md file is delivered. In this case:

• the documention is built
• the new version is deployed as GitHub Pages

on: push
name: Create Slate Documentation on Push
jobs:
  action-filter:
    runs-on: ubuntu-18.04
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@master
    - name: action-filter
      uses: actions/bin/filter@master
      with:
        args: branch master
    - name: files-filter
      uses: wcchristian/gh-pattern-filter-action@master
      with:
        args: .*\\.md$
    - name: Build documentation
      uses: docker://decathlon/slate-builder-action:2.0.0
      env:
        DOC_BASE_FOLDER: .
        ZIP_BUILD: false
    - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
      uses: docker://maxheld83/ghpages@v0.2.1
      env:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        BUILD_DIR: test-documentation/build/