Unexpected token 'var' #220

tjbaker · 2021-11-30T22:02:48Z

I am trying to comment on a PR via a workflow and keep getting this exception:

SyntaxError: Unexpected token 'var'
    at new AsyncFunction (<anonymous>)
    at callAsyncFunction (/home/runner/work/_actions/actions/github-script/v5/dist/index.js:4942:56)
    at main (/home/runner/work/_actions/actions/github-script/v5/dist/index.js:4997:26)
    at Module.272 (/home/runner/work/_actions/actions/github-script/v5/dist/index.js:4981:1)
Error: Unhandled error: SyntaxError: Unexpected token 'var'
    at __webpack_require__ (/home/runner/work/_actions/actions/github-script/v5/dist/index.js:24:31)
    at startup (/home/runner/work/_actions/actions/github-script/v5/dist/index.js:43:19)
    at /home/runner/work/_actions/actions/github-script/v5/dist/index.js:49:18
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/runner/work/_actions/actions/github-script/v5/dist/index.js:52:10)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:959:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:995:10)

The code is really simple

      - name: Comment on PR
        uses: actions/github-script@v5
        if: failure()
        with:
          script: |
            github.rest.issues.createComment({
              issue_number: context.issue.number,
              owner: context.repo.owner,
              repo: context.repo.repo,
              body: "foo"
            })

Github support asked me to log a bug report here as well.

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

joshmgross · 2021-12-08T15:53:03Z

👋 Hey @tjbaker

What event is this workflow triggering on?

It's possible that context.issue.number isn't valid.

If it's helpful, you can print out the full context.issue:

      - name: Comment on PR
        uses: actions/github-script@v5
        if: failure()
        with:
          script: |
            console.log(JSON.stringify(context.issue))
            github.rest.issues.createComment({
              issue_number: context.issue.number,
              owner: context.repo.owner,
              repo: context.repo.repo,
              body: "foo"
            })

tjbaker · 2021-12-08T16:01:17Z

It is triggered on pull_request

on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [ master ]

I can't try the additional debugging just yet...

tjbaker · 2021-12-09T15:13:41Z

Ok, I think the actual problem is with using a multiline output from a previous step's stdout as the body in createComment.

The problem is trying to make hashicorp/setup-terraform work with github-script@v5 and github.rest.issues.createComment. There is an example in the readme, but it is against actions/[email protected]
https://github.com/hashicorp/setup-terraform

cemo · 2022-01-07T18:05:01Z

@tjbaker did you resolve your issue?

joshmgross · 2022-01-07T18:24:10Z

Ok, I think the actual problem is with using a multiline output from a previous step's stdout as the body in createComment.

If you need to pass into multi-line outputs into the script block, you'll likely need to pass those values in as environment variables. Otherwise, newlines will be interpreted literally in the script and won't be valid JavaScript.

Example:

- uses: actions/github-script@v5
  env: 
    MULTILINE_VALUE: ${{ steps.my_step.outputs.value }}
  with:
    script: |
        github.issues.createComment({
          issue_number: context.issue.number,
          owner: context.repo.owner,
          repo: context.repo.repo,
          body: process.env.MULTILINE_VALUE
        })

jsumners · 2022-02-15T16:41:21Z

I am having this issue where the error message is:

SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token
    at new AsyncFunction (<anonymous>)
    at callAsyncFunction (/home/runner/work/_actions/actions/github-script/v6/dist/index.js:4797:16)
...

My step looks like:

      - name: Post comment
        uses: actions/github-script@v6
        with:
          script: |
            const comment = '
              Data for `${{ steps.get_id.outputs.an_id }}`:

              ```json
              ${{ steps.get_data.outputs.result }}
              ```';
            github.rest.issues.createComment({
              issue_number: context.issue.number,
              owner: context.repo.owner,
              repo: context.repo.repo,
              body: comment
            })

Where steps.get_data.outputs.result is a large JSON object with formatting.

joshmgross · 2022-02-15T19:14:35Z

@jsumners are you able to pass that JSON object as an environment variable instead?

jsumners · 2022-02-15T19:27:55Z

No. I moved on to writing the data to a file with JavaScript and then curl -X POST ... -d @the.file in order to get around this problem.

joshmgross · 2022-02-15T20:56:06Z

Going to close this issue out. If anyone sees an error like this, it usually means that the JavaScript is invalid in some way.

Usually this occurs when using the Actions expression syntax (${{ }}) in input a value that's then interpreted by the action as invalid JavaScript (ex. newlines, semi-colons, quotes, etc).

The workaround is to process this input indirectly, rather than inserting it directly into your script. This can be done by writing it to a file or using an env variable and reading it with process.env, see #220 (comment)

Feel free to open a new issue if you're still having issues after trying those workarounds.

salecharohit · 2022-02-19T09:05:43Z

So I encountered this same issue and was able to resolve it using below as per @joshmgross's recommendation

  - name: Plan Output
    uses: actions/github-script@v6
    if: github.event_name == 'pull_request'
    env:
      PLAN: "terraform\n${{ steps.plan.outputs.stdout }}"
    with:
      github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
      script: |
        const output = `## Terraform Prod Infra Plan
        #### Terraform Initialization \`${{ steps.init.outcome }}\`
        #### Terraform Validation \`${{ steps.validate.outcome }}\`
        #### Terraform Plan \`${{ steps.plan.outcome }}\`
        
        <details><summary>Show Plan</summary>
        ${process.env.PLAN}
        </details>

        *Pusher: @${{ github.actor }}, Action: \`${{ github.event_name }}\`*`;

        github.rest.issues.createComment ({
          issue_number: context.issue.number,
          owner: context.repo.owner,
          repo: context.repo.repo,
          body: output
        })

This workflow is a direct consequence of the asynchronous release schedule of pydantic and pydantic core and the fact that pydantic is always pinned to a particular pydantic-core version. Dependabot doesn't see these transitive relations and so can't properly update the versions in this case (it always assumes the latest for every dependency). This will naturally lead to broken CI making these version updates impossible to merge. Since our project directly only cares about pydantic and not pydantic-core, we can ignore pydantic-core updates (future patch) and run a dedicated workflow on every dependabot pull request that would check whether changes to our requirements files are needed. If changes are needed, the GitHub actions bot will comment on the pull request that a change to these files are needed and provide a patch to the reviewer to apply and update the pull request. The workflow is only executed when changes to the requirements files are proposed (realistically only by dependabot). Note that it's not possible to specify the source branch as the workflow trigger, only the target branch, and so that could not have been used as a better filter for dependabot-proposed pull requests specifically. It is run using a Python Alpine docker image, saves the git diff produced by pip-compile to the default github actions environment followed by a github script action that will pop the diff out of the environment and use it to comment on the pull request. References: - https://docs.github.com/en/actions/writing-workflows/choosing-what-your-workflow-does/workflow-commands-for-github-actions#multiline-strings - https://docs.github.com/en/actions/writing-workflows/choosing-when-your-workflow-runs/using-conditions-to-control-job-execution - https://github.com/actions/github-script?tab=readme-ov-file#comment-on-an-issue - actions/github-script#247 (comment) - actions/github-script#220 (comment) Signed-off-by: Erik Skultety <[email protected]>

This workflow is a direct consequence of the asynchronous release schedule of pydantic and pydantic core and the fact that pydantic is always pinned to a particular pydantic-core version. Dependabot doesn't see these transitive relations and so can't properly update the versions in this case (it always assumes the latest for every dependency). This will naturally lead to broken CI making these version updates impossible to merge. Since our project directly only cares about pydantic and not pydantic-core, we can ignore pydantic-core updates (future patch) and run a dedicated workflow on every dependabot pull request that would check whether any additional changes (i.e. transitive dependency version locks) to our requirements files are needed. If so, then the GitHub actions bot will comment on the pull request that a change to these files is needed and will provide a patch to the reviewer to apply and update the pull request. The workflow is only executed when changes to the requirements files are proposed (realistically only by dependabot). Note that it's not possible to specify the source branch as the workflow trigger, only the target branch, and so that could not have been used as a better filter for dependabot-proposed pull requests specifically. It is run using a Python Alpine docker image, saves the git diff produced by pip-compile to the default github actions environment followed by a github script action that will pop the diff out of the environment and use it to comment on the pull request. References: - https://docs.github.com/en/actions/writing-workflows/choosing-what-your-workflow-does/workflow-commands-for-github-actions#multiline-strings - https://docs.github.com/en/actions/writing-workflows/choosing-when-your-workflow-runs/using-conditions-to-control-job-execution - https://github.com/actions/github-script?tab=readme-ov-file#comment-on-an-issue - actions/github-script#247 (comment) - actions/github-script#220 (comment) Signed-off-by: Erik Skultety <[email protected]>

joshmgross closed this as completed Feb 15, 2022

joshmgross mentioned this issue May 13, 2025

Clearly document passing inputs to the script #603

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Unexpected token 'var' #220

Unexpected token 'var' #220

tjbaker commented Nov 30, 2021

joshmgross commented Dec 8, 2021

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tjbaker commented Dec 8, 2021

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tjbaker commented Dec 9, 2021 •

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cemo commented Jan 7, 2022

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jsumners commented Feb 15, 2022

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salecharohit commented Feb 19, 2022

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Unexpected token 'var' #220

Unexpected token 'var' #220

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tjbaker commented Nov 30, 2021

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