Video Tutorial on Scheduling R Script using Github Actions

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Github Actions with R

Github Actions which usually trigger a script based on event like PR, Issue Creation can be modified using its YAML to trigger a script on a schedule (CRON).

Here’s the main.yml file used for the Github Action.

name: nifty50scrape

# Controls when the action will run.
on:
  schedule:
    - cron:  '0 13 * * *'


jobs: 
  autoscrape:
    # The type of runner that the job will run on
    runs-on: macos-latest

    # Load repo and install R
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@master
    - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-r@master

    # Set-up R
    - name: Install packages
      run: |
        R -e 'install.packages("tidyverse")'
        R -e 'install.packages("janitor")'
        R -e 'install.packages("rvest")'
    # Run R script
    - name: Scrape
      run: Rscript nifty50_scraping.R
      
 # Add new files in data folder, commit along with other modified files, push
    - name: Commit files
      run: |
        git config --local user.name actions-user
        git config --local user.email "[email protected]"
        git add data/*
        git commit -am "GH ACTION Headlines $(date)"
        git push origin main
      env:
        REPO_KEY: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
        username: github-actions

Look at this repo for more details of the code used for Scraping – https://github.com/amrrs/scrape-automation

For more details on Github Actions for R Scripts, Refer this R OpenSci Book – https://ropenscilabs.github.io/actions_sandbox/