Automate Weather Alerts for Your Garden Using GitHub Actions and Copilot ☀️🌱

[ghostinhershell]

Have you ever wished your plants could send you a text when they're thirsty? While we haven’t quite figured out how to make tomato plants talk just yet, we can create a smart system that will keep you in the loop about the weather! 🌦️ In this guide, we’ll set up automated weather alerts using Actions and Copilot.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have an automated system that checks the weather forecast for your area and sends personalized gardening alerts via GitHub Issues! Coding experience is a big help but not required—we’ve designed this tutorial specifically for beginners who are ready to dive into GitHub Actions, using API’s and the magic of Copilot. 🧑‍💻✨

What We're Building 🚀

We’ll be creating a workflow using GitHub Actions that will:

• Push daily weather updates from AccuWeather to your repository for your location
• Provide alerts for gardening conditions like rain, frost, heat, etc.
• Create GitHub Issues to track those alerts and take action

Prerequisites ✅

Before we jump into the fun stuff, here's what you'll need:

• A GitHub account (don’t worry, it’s free!)
• GitHub Copilot (available for free with limitations, with a free trial, or with a subscription)
• An AccuWeather API key (free developer tier)
• Basic familiarity with GitHub (but you don't need to know coding yet!)

Step 1: Setting Up Your GitHub Repository 🏡

Let's create a home for our project! Create a new repository and name it something like garden-weather-alerts. If you’re not sure how to create a repository yet, no worries! This video by @LadyKerr is a great resource to reference: How to create your first GitHub repository: A beginner's guide.

🎉 Congrats! You’ve just created your project’s home. Time to build!

Step 2: Getting Your AccuWeather API Key 🌤️

In order for this project to work, we will need to pull weather data from AccuWeather. To do that you will need 2 things:

• An AccuWeather API Key
• A Location Key

Lucky for you I’ve already published a how-to that will walk you, step by step, through how to retrieve both keys: How to Pull AccuWeather Forecast Updates Using AccuWeather's API and Postman ☀️🚀

Once you’ve retrieved the keys, put them to the side. You’ll need them in Step 5.

Note

🔑 Pro Tip: Keep your API key secret—don’t upload it publicly!

Step 3: Create Your Project Files and Write Your Code 🗂️🧑‍💻

Now, let’s set up the core files that will handle the weather data and generate alerts:

1. In your repository, click Add file > Create new file. Need help with adding files to your repository? Check this guide out: Creating new files

2. Name the file weather-alert.js.

In this step we’re going to use JavaScript to create a workflow file that automatically fetches a 5-day weather forecast from AccuWeather, analyzes the data for garden-relevant conditions (frost risk, heat stress, heavy rain, and drought), and creates a GitHub issue with alerts if any of those conditions are detected.

Check out this video to learn more about adding code to your repository.

Using Copilot to Write the Script 🤖

The use of Copilot is not a requirement here at all but it can make implementation and troubleshooting much easier. You can leverage Copilot to get this done in a couple of ways.

• The first would be to enable Copilot in your IDE of choice and begin building from there. Copilot can offer coding suggestions as you type, which is super helpful.
• The second would be to use Copilot Chat to write the code for you. If you’re a beginner this option would definitely be the quickest way to get this project off the ground but I do recommend digging around and at least getting a surface level understanding of what the code is doing.

You can use the following prompts to guide Copilot in writing the code:

1. Import Libraries:

   // Import required libraries
   // Use axios for HTTP requests and Octokit for GitHub API interactions

2. Set Up Environment Variables (since we don’t want to hardcode API keys and such):

   // Get environment variables (API keys, GitHub token, repository details)

3. Initialize Octokit:

   // Initialize Octokit with GitHub token for authentication

4. Fetch Weather Forecast:

   // Function to fetch weather forecast from AccuWeather API
   // Use axios to make an HTTP GET request

5. Analyze Garden Conditions:

   // Function to analyze weather forecast for garden-relevant conditions
   // Check for frost risk, heat stress, heavy rain, and drought warnings

6. Create GitHub Issue:

   // Function to create GitHub issue with garden alerts
   // Format the issue title and body with alerts and gardening actions

7. Main Function:

   // Main function to run the entire process
   // Fetch weather forecast, analyze conditions, and create GitHub issue if needed

8. Run the Script:

   // Run the main function to execute the script

Note

Here’s an example of what this should look like.

Once you've got everything set up, you're ready to move on!

Step 4: Setting Up GitHub Actions Workflow ⚙️

Now for the fun part—setting up GitHub Actions to run our script automatically. Here’s how to do it:

1. In your repository, create a new directory: .github/workflows.
2. Inside that folder, create a new file named garden-alerts.yml.

Here we will need to write an Actions workflow that automates the process of running a weather alert script every morning at 10 AM UTC (or whatever time you would like it to run).

If you’re a beginner or just unfamiliar with writing YAML, these resources will be helpful for getting started: [Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/writing-workflows/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions) and [Learn YAML in Y minutes](https://learnxinyminutes.com/yaml/).

Using Copilot to Write the Workflow 📜

If you’re not sure how to write an Actions workflow then here are some prompts that will help Copilot help you:

1. Workflow Name and Triggers:

# Define the workflow name and triggers
# Schedule to run daily at 10:00 AM UTC and allow manual trigger

2. Job Configuration:

# Define the job to check weather conditions
# Use Ubuntu as the runner and set necessary permissions

3. Steps to Execute:

# Steps to execute the job
# - Checkout repository
# - Set up Node.js
# - Install dependencies
# - Run the weather alert script with environment variables

4. Configure Workflow Permissions (skipping this will cause your Action to fail):

permissions:
  issues: write  # Permission to create and manage issues
  contents: read # Permission to read repository contents

Note

Here’s an example of what this should look like.

Step 5: Setting Up Repository Secrets 🔒

Note

If you are following along with this tutorial then note that this step is essential. The JavaScript written in step 3 will be referencing these secrets, and your Actions will fail without it.

To keep sensitive information like your API key secure, we'll store them as Secrets.

1. In your repository, go to Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions
2. Click New repository secret
3. Add the following secrets one by one:
   • Name: ACCUWEATHER_API_KEY | Value: Your AccuWeather API key
   • Name: LOCATION_KEY | Value: Your location key from AccuWeather
     Here’s an example of what this should look like:
     

Note

Remember, you will have to do this for both your AccuWeather API Key and your Location Key.

Step 6: Test Your Workflow 🧪

Let's test and make sure everything works:

1. Commit all your files to your repository
2. Go to the Actions tab in your repository
3. Find the Daily Garden Weather Alerts workflow
4. Click Run workflow > Run workflow
   

GitHub will execute your workflow. If there are any weather alerts, it will create an issue in your repository!

Once the action is done running, and if everything is configured correctly, you can check the Issues tab to see your newly created garden alerts! 🌻

Congrats! You’ve just built an automated weather alert system for your garden using GitHub Actions and Copilot. Your garden will thank you for staying one step ahead of Mother Nature (if that’s even a thing) 🌱🫡

Troubleshooting Common Issues 🤔

• Issues not being created? Double-check that your workflow has the necessary permissions (see step 4) and that you properly added your repository secrets (see step 5).
  • If your workflow run history shows that the run was successful but you don’t see a created issue, this just means that the weather forecast does not match the statuses that would necessitate creating an issue. This is expected behavior.
• No data from AccuWeather? Verify that your API Key and Location Key are correct.
• Workflow not running? Check the Actions tab for any error messages in the workflow logs. **Learn more about troubleshooting Actions workflows here**. Note that you can also use Copilot Chat to troubleshoot failing Actions as well.

Note

If you’re at all stuck, please feel free to reference my demo of this project here. I encourage you to fork the project and play around with it in order to familiarize yourself with how it’s setup..

Customizing Your Weather Alerts 👷

Want to make this even more useful for your specific garden? Here are some ideas that will help you take this a step further:

• Add more detailed statuses, labels and notes in the issue description using JavaScript 🌱
• Create specific alerts for different plants or garden sections, like a reminder to thin those carrots or harvest your greens 🔔
  -** Track additional weather conditions** like UV index or wind speed that can be detrimental to little seedlings that were started indoors ☔
• Use GitHub Actions to trigger other automations based on alerts ♻️

Let's grow a community of tech-savvy gardeners together! 🌻💻

[ghostinhershell]

Share Your Garden Tech! 🌼

I’d love to see how you’ve used this system! Share in the comments:

• How have you customized your alerts? 🔨
• Has this automation helped your garden thrive? 🪴
• Screenshots of your alerts in action! 🔔
• Any interesting plants or weather conditions you’re tracking! 📊