Christian Heilmann

Adding GitHub repository info, pages links and latest commits to any page using github-include

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2023 at 12:17 pm

GitHub is where code lives. You make your updates there, and in the case of frontend work, you can even host it in GitHub pages.

When I publish something, I write a blog post and often I put some of the code in the post. When feedback comes in about new features I update the code and then I dread to also update the blog post. So, instead, I wanted to find a way to offer a link to the GitHub repo that shows the main link, a link to the GitHub pages, and show the latest commits. This allows people to see what changed in the code without me changing the post.

To make this happen, I wrote github-include, a web component that allows you to add a link to a repo to your blog post. It then converts it to a card showing the main repo link, a link to the GitHub Pages demo and the last x commits.

For example, the following HTML code gets converted to the card shown as an image here:

<github-include commits="5" pages="&#x1f30d;" links="true">
    <a href="https://github.com/codepo8/mastodon-share">
       Mastodon Share
   </a>
</github-include>

Recording of the web component in action

By default, it detects the setting of your OS and displays either as a dark or a light theme. If you don’t want any styling at all, you can also use plain HTML instead of the web component:

<div class="github-include" 
     data-commits="5"
     data-pages="&#x1f30d;" 
     data-links="true">
  <a href="https://github.com/codepo8/mastodon-share">
  Mastodon Share
  </a>
</div>

You can see it in action on the demo page .

You can customise all the functionality and labels of the component using attributes. These are all documented in the README .

Share on Mastodon (needs instance)

Share on Twitter

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Check out the Dev Digest Newsletter I write every week for WeAreDevelopers. Latest issues:

160: Graphs and RAGs explained and VS Code extension hacks Graphs and RAG explained, how AI is reshaping UI and work, how to efficiently use Cursor, VS Code extensions security issues.
159: AI pipelines, 10x faster TypeScript, How to interview How to use LLMs to help you write code and how much electricity does that use? Is your API secure? 10x faster TypeScript thanks to Go!
158: 🕹️ Super Mario AI 🔑 API keys in LLMs 🤙🏾 Vibe Coding Why is AI playing Super Mario? How is hallucinating the least of our worries and what are rules for developing Safety Critical Code?
157: CUDA in Python, Gemini Code Assist and back-dooring LLMs We met with a CUDA expert from NVIDIA about the future of hardware, we look at how AI fails and how to play pong on 140 browser tabs.
156: Enterprise dead, all about Bluesky and React moves on! Learn about Bluesky as a platform, how to build a React App and how to speed up SQL. And play an impossible game in the browser.

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