How to add a comment on a FILE inside a pull request review with other comments

[shivradnimra]

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I have been looking at creating pull request reviews from github cli, but I cannot figure out if there is a way to make a comment on a file (an not a line inside the file) inside a review. The rest API endpoint for comments (see https://docs.github.com/en/rest/pulls/comments?apiVersion=2022-11-28#create-a-review-comment-for-a-pull-request) allows commenting on files but generates a review with a single comment. The endpoint for pull request reviews (see https://docs.github.com/en/rest/pulls/reviews?apiVersion=2022-11-28#create-a-review-for-a-pull-request) allows making multiple comments in one review but does not seem to support commenting on files (i.e. comments filed does not accept "subject_type" for some reason!)

Anybody knows if there is a workaround for this?

[THE-DEEPDAS]

Unfortunately, GitHub’s REST API currently doesn’t allow file-level comments in a review with multiple comments; it’s only possible to make comments on specific lines. This limitation is somewhat frustrating, as the API doesn’t allow combining multiple comments (including file-level comments) into a single review session.

Here are a couple of potential workarounds that could help:

1. Use a Single Comment Review with File-Level Comments

Since the POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/{pull_number}/comments endpoint supports file-level comments, you can create reviews where each comment is made one-by-one, using separate API requests for each file-level comment. The downside is that each comment will be treated as its own review, so they won't be grouped together in a single review session.

gh api
-X POST
-H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json"
"/repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/{pull_number}/comments"
-f body="Your file-level comment"
-f path="path/to/file"
-f position=1

2. Using Summary Comments in Review Body for File-Level Notes
   If you want a way to keep multiple comments together in a single review, you can add line-level comments for specific lines and then include a file-level summary or general feedback in the review body itself. You can do this by adding general comments at the review level instead of targeting specific files:

gh api
-X POST
-H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json"
"/repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/{pull_number}/reviews"
-f body="General comments: \n\n - For file1.js: Issue noted at the file level"
-f event="COMMENT"
While this doesn’t replace true file-level comments, it can serve as a way to provide organized feedback without having to comment on specific lines.

3. Combine REST API Calls with GitHub CLI in a Script
   If you’re open to scripting, you could create a script that adds multiple file-level comments using gh api to generate individual comments on files and then collects the results to give a more organized review experience.

Example Script to Handle Multiple File-Level Comments
Here’s a small example of how such a script might look, where each file-level comment is created as its own “review” but logged together in the terminal:

Example usage: ./file_review.sh owner repo pull_number "Your comment" path/to/file

owner="your-owner"
repo="your-repo"
pull_number=$1
comment=$2
files=("path/to/file1" "path/to/file2") # Add files here

for file in "${files[@]}"; do
gh api
-X POST
-H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json"
"/repos/$owner/$repo/pulls/$pull_number/comments"
-f body="$comment"
-f path="$file"
-f position=1
done

Each workaround has limitations, but until GitHub updates their API, these methods can help approximate multi-comment reviews with some organization around file-level feedback, hope it helps!!