How To Easily Automate Your Github Profile to Showcase Your Work

📜 🇫🇷 My recent French videos

<img src="https://img.shields.io/youtube/channel/subscribers/UCzdX32OIhpfrdxQRhN2s98w?style=for-the-badge"></img>
<table>
{{range rss "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCzdX32OIhpfrdxQRhN2s98w" 10}}
<tr>
  <td>
    <img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/{{slice .URL 32}}/default.jpg"></img>
  </td>
  <td>
    <a href="{{.URL}}">{{.Title}}</a> ({{humanize .PublishedAt}})  
    <br/>
    <img src="https://img.shields.io/youtube/views/{{slice .URL 32}}?style=flat-square"> </img>
  </td>
</tr>
{{- end}}
</table>

This ends up looking something like this:

![](#)(https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*JYRuCrUzUiPFAz7leTiYSw.png)

Now that we've set that up… time to automate the profile updates!

### Configuring GitHub actions

#### Create the Personal Acces Token

The first thing to do (if you don't have one already) is to set up a **Personal Access Token** on GitHub. You will need to go to `Developer settings` \> `Personal access tokens` \> `Generate new token`.You will need the following scopes : `repo:status`, `public_repo`, `read:user`, `read:org`. Give it an **indefinite lifetime**. It will look something like this:

ghp_zabwMCx576kdcvStiyG19D96J2jWnd4MDgQI

  You might like to **save it somewhere safe** since GitHub is not going to show it to you again. Then go over to your profile repository, and then go to `Settings` \> `Secrets` \> `Actions` and click on `New Repository Secret` . Here, you'll want to **create a new secret** called `PERSONAL_GITHUB_TOKEN` and paste in the token you've just created.

#### Create the GitHub Action

Now we just need to set up the GitHub Action. For that, we just need to create a folder called `.github` and within that folder, another one called `workflows` .

Inside the .github/workflows folder create a file called "readme-scribe.yaml". (see [here](#)(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kodaps/.github/main/.github/workflows/readme-scribe.yml)) The action is configured to run every hour and on every push, and it has one job with three simple steps:

*   **Checkout** the repository code
*   **Render the template** using the personal access token
*   **Push** the code back to the repository

Beware: if the profile is for an organization (as is mine), make sure you update the path for the README output file within the Render Template step.

```yaml
name: Update README

    on:
      push:      # run @ every push
      schedule:  # run @ every hour
        - cron: "0 */1 * * *"

    jobs:
      markscribe:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
          - name: Checkout
            uses: actions/checkout@v2
            with:
              ref: main
          - name: Render Template
            uses: muesli/readme-scribe@master
            env:
              GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_GITHUB_TOKEN }}
            with:
              template: "templates/README.md.tpl"
              # Use "profile/README.md" instead on an org profile
              writeTo: "README.md"
          - name: Push
            run: | 
              git config user.name readme-scribe 🤖
              git config user.email actions@github.com
              git add .
              git commit -m "generated profile"
              git push origin main

Now commit the file and git push to the remote repository. Everything should be working. You can check by going to the Actions tab in your profile repository and checking out what the actions are logging out.

And Sitting back and Relaxing (or not)

Now that's done, you should have an automatically updating profile that shows your work within GitHub, your content here, and any YouTube videos you might have produced. Time to kick back and relax… or to get back to producing content to flesh out the profile!