How can I get Slack notifications when a new version of Playwright is released?

Butch Mayhew

Butch Mayhew

— 2 min read
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One of the many reasons I'm in love with Playwright is the constant updates the tool receives. With these frequent releases there may be a few days or weeks where I may miss out on the latest features that are available. To remedy this problem I created a 'Version-Checker' github repository. The goal was create automation that monitors the github releases page, and alerts me within a day via Slack when a new version is released.

GitHub - BMayhew/version-checker: A small repo with github action for checking github releases and notifying via slack
A small repo with github action for checking github releases and notifying via slack - GitHub - BMayhew/version-checker: A small repo with github action for checking github releases and notifying v...
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The version-checker has a readme which walks you through how to set this up in your team or personal slack channel. You will need to have administrative access to add a Slack app, and be able to create a github actions secret for the webhook url. When creating the Slack app you can also customize to your liking.

The github-action.yml is straight forward

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    # Run at 12:05 Monday - Fridays
    - cron:  '05 12 * * 1-5'

name: Version Checker

jobs:
  simple-check-playwright:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Simplify Fetch Data
        run: curl -s GET https://api.github.com/repos/microsoft/playwright/tags\?per_page\=1 | jq -r '.[].name' > version.txt
    
      - name: Save Version as Variable
        id: version_variable
        run: echo "VERSION=$(cat version.txt)" >> $GITHUB_ENV
     
      - name: Cache playwright version number
        uses: actions/cache@v3
        id: playwright-version
        with:
          path: |
            ./version.txt
          key: playwright-${{ env.VERSION }}

      - name: Notify if version.txt has changed
        if: steps.playwright-version.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
        uses: 8398a7/action-slack@v3
        with:
          text: 'A new version of Playwright has been released! https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/releases/tag/${{ env.VERSION }}'
          status: ${{ job.status }}
          fields: workflow
        env:
          SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL: ${{ secrets.SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL }}

You will need to create a SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL as a github secret. Once set you will receive a Slack notification if there is a new version of Playwright Released within a working business day.

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