Generate weekly digest email from GitHub discussion board

[Kourtney-Burger]

My team is working on making better use of GitHub's project management tools, including discussion boards. We had the idea to summarize discussion board posts into a weekly digest email and I would love to automate this somehow.

[Kourtney-Burger]

Comment in mentors g-chat from @k-doering-NOAA

This reminds me of something Kelli and Christine put together: https://nmfs-ost.github.io/projectstats/

I don't think it does discussions, but I imagine you could follow a similar approach, pulling data from the GitHub API.

Another thought, there is this package called Blastula that could help you send emails from our Posit connect server - you could run the report periodically and have it send emails every time! More details: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1783zEdKFgTOWg4eayePrPjqAS9j6pN1hNPqd8h787Ao/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.djece43oy1ph

[Kourtney-Burger]

trying to install the 'projectstats' package in R and hitting a roadblock. It looks like the packages documentation is outdated
devtools::install_github("nmfs-fish-tools/projectstats") should be devtools::install_github("nmfs-ost/projectstats").

When I run that I get the following error

Using GitHub PAT from the git credential store.
Error: Failed to install 'unknown package' from GitHub:
  HTTP error 403.
  Resource protected by organization SAML enforcement. You must grant your OAuth token access to this organization.

  Rate limit remaining: 4940/5000
  Rate limit reset at: 2025-05-12 21:34:25 UTC

In the past when I hit a similar error, I used the following directions

1. Clone the relevant repositories to your local github folder
2. Set your working directory to the cloned repository
3. Use the devtools build command to create a .tar file of the compiled library devtools::build()
4. Install the the compiled library using the following code install.packages("\~/PACKAGE.tar.gz", repos = NULL, type = "source")

However, I run into a similar error when I try to create the .tar file. Based on my googling this may have something to do with tokens. I have never used this so I am not sure what the next steps are

[k-doering-NOAA]

@Kourtney-Burger good spot on the readme org error! Would you mind opening an issue or submitting a PR so Kelli knows to fix the issue?

Some things to try - check out the sso FAQ or try to fix if it seems like it could be one of these known issues with downloading R pkgs

[Kourtney-Burger]

Thanks Kathryn, I did a combination of things and I think it worked?

1. run devtools::install_github("r-lib/remotes") which returned this error

Using GitHub PAT from the git credential store.
Downloading GitHub repo r-lib/remotes@HEAD
Error in utils::download.file(url, path, method = method, quiet = quiet,  : 
 cannot open URL 'https://api.github.com/repos/r-lib/remotes/tarball/HEAD

2. Open URL 'https://api.github.com/repos/r-lib/remotes/tarball/HEAD' in browser and save the .tar.gz file to computer
3. Run install.packages("C:/Users/kourtney.burger/Downloads/r-lib-remotes-v2.5.0-19-gbcd35d5.tar.gz") which properly installed the remotes package
4. Restart my r session
5. Run remotes::install_github("nmfs-ost/projectstats", auth_token = NULL) which again returned the error

Downloading GitHub repo nmfs-ost/projectstats@HEAD
Error in utils::download.file(url, path, method = method, quiet = quiet,  : 
cannot open URL 'https://api.github.com/repos/nmfs-ost/projectstats/tarball/HEAD'

6. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for projectstats package, open URL https://api.github.com/repos/nmfs-ost/projectstats/tarball/HEAD in browser, save the .tar.gz file and run install.packages("C:/Users/kourtney.burger/Downloads/nmfs-ost-projectstats-1fe2de0.tar.gz")

As I am writing this out I realize maybe I didn't need the remotes package, but I wasn't able to get to the proper URL without step 5 so maybe I do need it?

You should be able to get the .tar.gz file by running the steps below, but I think there was an issue with devtools, so the steps above would be a devtools work around

1. Clone the relevant repositories to your local github folder
2. Set your working directory to the cloned repository
3. Use the devtools build command to create a .tar file of the compiled library devtools::build()
4. Install the the compiled library using the following code install.packages("\~/PACKAGE.tar.gz", repos = NULL, type = "source")

This is all very confusing to me so please let me know if I am falling down the wrong path, but I think the projectstats package is installed and I am going to test it now!

[Kourtney-Burger]

On this topic, Kathryn and I met to discuss APIs and GitHub tokens

We discovered that you can use the GraphQL API for Discussions and the gh package to work with it in R .

As mentioned above, from there a combination of the Blastula package and a Posit Connect Server can be used to automate sending the email

Thank you @k-doering-NOAA !

[Kourtney-Burger]

No update on this. It's still a future goal to learn how to utilize GitHub APIs to generate summaries but my team has cut back on using discussions so this is not a huge priority for me right now

[stefaniebutland]

@Kourtney-Burger in light of that, what do you think about changing Issue status to Ideas or Simmering?

[Kourtney-Burger]

great idea! Just moved it to Ideas so others can add anything if they see it there