How can i close all issues set as done in my projects using the gh cli

[yassinm]

Hi All.

community/community#35426

I added the above discussion but i felt maybe i can do this from the cli if there is no way to do it from the ui. I dont mind writing it in go even it is that annoying. I find just figuring the grpahl API is not easy from the documentation or from reading the code.

Best Regards

[LangLangBart]

(This answer focuses on getting the data of all open issues in a project with a status of Done for a particular user. How you then process your issues to close them is up to you).

Query_1

First we have to find out the number of the project, another possibility would be the id (see node-id GitHub Docs).

{
  user(login: "LangLangBart") {
    projectsV2(first: 100) {
      totalCount
      nodes {
        number
        id
        title
      }
    }
  }
}

Result 1

{
  "data": {
    "user": {
      "projectsV2": {
        "totalCount": 1,
        "nodes": [
          {
            "number": 2,
            "id": "PVT_kwHOBYXG0s4AHGtT",
            "title": "TestMe"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Query_2

For the user LangLangBart and the project number 2, let's get information about all issues, pr's and drafts.

query ($user: String!, $projectNumber: Int!, $endCursor: String) {
  user(login: $user) {
    projectV2(number: $projectNumber) {
      number
      title
      items(first: 100, after: $endCursor) {
        totalCount
        pageInfo {
          hasNextPage
          endCursor
        }
        nodes {
          type
          ... on ProjectV2Item {
            fieldValueByName(name: "Status") {
              ... on ProjectV2ItemFieldSingleSelectValue {
                name
                id
                creator {
                  login
                }
                updatedAt
              }
            }
          }
          content {
            ... on Issue {
              state
              number
              repository {
                nameWithOwner
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Result 2

We get 1x issue and 1x draft, the issue is OPEN, has as status (fieldValueByName.name) Done.

{
  "data": {
    "user": {
      "projectV2": {
        "number": 2,
        "title": "TestMe",
        "items": {
          "totalCount": 2,
          "nodes": [
            {
              "type": "ISSUE",
              "fieldValueByName": {
                "name": "Done",
                "id": "PVTFSV_lQHOBYXG0s4AHGtTzgC5qt_OAf4IFQ",
                "creator": {
                  "login": "LangLangBart"
                },
                "updatedAt": "2022-10-12T18:25:44Z"
              },
              "content": {
                "state": "OPEN",
                "number": 2,
                "repository": {
                  "nameWithOwner": "LangLangBart/gh-look"
                }
              }
            },
            {
              "type": "DRAFT_ISSUE",
              "fieldValueByName": {
                "name": "In Progress",
                "id": "PVTFSV_lQHOBYXG0s4AHGtTzgC6C1zOAf4bgQ",
                "creator": {
                  "login": "LangLangBart"
                },
                "updatedAt": "2022-10-12T18:39:38Z"
              },
              "content": {}
            }
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

gh allows to boil down our query with --jq or --template

--jq

gh api graphql --paginate --field projectNumber=2 --raw-field user=LangLangBart --raw-field query=$Query_2 --jq '.[].user.projectV2.items.nodes[] | select(.fieldValueByName.name == "Done") | select(.type == "ISSUE") | select(.content.state == "OPEN") | .content'

# result
{"number":2,"repository":{"nameWithOwner":"LangLangBart/gh-look"},"state":"OPEN"}

--template

gh api graphql --paginate --field projectNumber=2 --raw-field user=LangLangBart --raw-field query=$Query_2 --template '{{- range .data.user.projectV2.items.nodes -}}{{- if .fieldValueByName -}}{{- if (and (eq .type "ISSUE") (eq .fieldValueByName.name "Done") (eq .content.state "OPEN")) }}{{- tablerow (printf "%0.f" .content.number | color "green+h") .content.repository.nameWithOwner (printf "%s added by %s %s" (.fieldValueByName.name | color "22+b:2") (.fieldValueByName.creator.login | color "cyan+h") (timeago .fieldValueByName.updatedAt | color "gray+h")) -}}{{- tablerender -}}{{- end -}}{{- end -}}{{- end -}}'

# result
2  LangLangBart/gh-look  Done added by LangLangBart 37 minutes ago

closing thoughts

• GitHub suggest three ways to Automate your project in their Docs:
  • ❌ Using the built-in automations lacks the desired functionality
  • ❌ Using the API to manage Projects as seen above we can get the data, but closing multiple issues with a mutation only doable with a loop
  • ✅ Automating Projects using Actions this could be your solution if you write an action workflow yourself and trigger it with a workflow_dispatch or run it on a schedule.

[yassinm]

Thank you so much for that detailed answer !!!

here is a bash script i came up with that does all the looping and closes all my open issues in my org. If someone wants to use this (for posteririty) all they would have to pass would be the project number and the organisation.

  lines=() && while IFS='' read -r line; do lines+=("${line}"); done < \
    <(gh api graphql --paginate \
    --field projectNumber=<replace-with-prj> \
    --raw-field organization=<replace-with-org> \
    --raw-field query='
query ($projectNumber: Int!, $organization: String!, $endCursor: String) {
  organization(login: $organization) {
    projectV2(number: $projectNumber) {
      number
      title
      items(first: 100, after: $endCursor) {
        totalCount
        pageInfo {
          hasNextPage
          endCursor
        }
        nodes {
          type
          ... on ProjectV2Item {
            fieldValueByName(name: "Status") {
              ... on ProjectV2ItemFieldSingleSelectValue {
                name
                id
                creator {
                  login
                }
                updatedAt
              }
            }
          }
          content {
            ... on Issue {
              id
              state
              number
              repository {
                nameWithOwner
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}' \
    --template '{{- range .data.organization.projectV2.items.nodes -}}{{- if .fieldValueByName -}}{{- if (and (eq .type "ISSUE") (eq .fieldValueByName.name "Done") (eq .content.state "OPEN")) }}{{- tablerow (printf "%0.f" .content.number) .content.id .content.repository.nameWithOwner (printf "%s added by %s %s" (.fieldValueByName.name ) (.fieldValueByName.creator.login) (timeago .fieldValueByName.updatedAt)) -}}{{- end -}}{{- end -}}{{- end -}}' \
    ) \
     && 
for line in "${lines[@]}"; do {
  issue_id=$(echo "${line}" | awk '{ print $2;}' )
  #echo issue:"${issue_id}"
  
  gh api graphql -f issueId=$issue_id \
    -f query='
mutation($issueId:ID!) {
  updateIssue(input: {id : $issueId, state: CLOSED}){
    issue {
      id
      title
    }
  }
}
' \
    --jq '{ id: .data.updateIssue.issue.id, title: .data.updateIssue.issue.title }'

[LangLangBart]

🔔 Having the issue closed when dragged into the Done status column seems like a good idea for GitHub to support in their built-in automations Projects workflow.

Note: Built-in workflows are available as part of a limited beta.

🙏

[mislav]

Awesome collaboration, both of you 👏

[bohjak]

A crude but simple one-liner to close a 100 issues:

gh issue list --json number --jq '.[].number' -L 100 | while read number; do gh issue close $number; done

[yassinm]

Neat :-)

1. Do you know if you can chek the status of the issue to be in Done with this incantation ?

2. When i tried running that it forced me to clone the git repo where the issues are from. Do you know if there is a way to do this anywhere in my file system without have the actual git repo cloned ? or just using the org and the repo name as above ?

[yassinm]

I was able to figure 2) still cant figure 1) here is what i tried

gh issue list --search "label:pf-feature status:Todo" --repo "unnug/pf-track" -L 10

That is coming up empty now but only when ispecify the status field. Something is wrong in how i am specifying the status

[bohjak]

Hmm, I see what you're getting at. Issues don't have status. That's a project thing. I'd imagine it should still be possible to get the issue numbers from the project (see gh project --help). Haven't tried yet.

[bohjak]

gh project item-list --format json --jq '.items.[].content.number' seems to do the trick. And it can be run from anywhere, not just the cloned repo directory.

[bohjak]

and gh project item-list --format json --jq '.items.[] | select(.status | contains("Todo")) | .content.number' to filter by Todo status