In the evolving landscape of software development, integrating with tools like GitHub has become increasingly streamlined thanks to platforms like Actioner.

In this blog we’ll explore 3 distinct methods of connecting to GitHub using Actioner: OAuth2, classic personal access tokens, and fine-grained personal access tokens. Understanding these options can significantly enhance your security and flexibility when managing GitHub operations.

Let’s get started.

Why use Personal access tokens?

Personal access tokens come in handy in case you find the scopes the Actioner’s OAuth app requests too broad. Personal access token support enables you to select fine-tuned permissions for your connections. They serve as an alternative to passwords for authenticating to GitHub when utilizing the GitHub API or the command line.

Classic vs. Fine-Grained Tokens

Fine-grained personal access tokens offer several security advantages compared to classic personal access tokens:

1. Each token is restricted to accessing resources owned by a single user or organization.
2. Tokens can only access specific repositories.
3. Tokens are granted specific permissions, providing more control than the scopes granted to classic personal access tokens.
4. Tokens must have an expiration date.
5. Organization owners can require approval for any fine-grained personal access tokens accessing organization resources.

Classic personal access tokens are less secure but are necessary for certain features:

1. Only classic personal access tokens have write access for public repositories not owned by you or your organization.
2. Outside collaborators can only use classic personal access tokens to access organization repositories where they are collaborators.
3. A few REST API endpoints are only available with classic personal access tokens. To see if an endpoint supports fine-grained tokens refer to the GitHub API documentation.

With generic HTTP node, you can call any GitHub API endpoint as long as the scopes you granted to your token allows you to call that endpoint.

In the example workflow below, I called the GitHub API’s Create a workflow dispatch event endpoint.

This configuration allowed me to run my GitHub Actions workflows directly through Slack.

Wrapping up

Each connection method offered by Actioner equips you with the right tools for secure and efficient GitHub integrations. You can explore the GitHub Actions Slack app by Actioner to ship code from Slack quickly thanks to Personal access tokens.

Don't forget to join our Slack community for more insights and support.