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Rob Waller
Rob Waller

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How to Add a GitHub Actions Badge to Your Project

I've been playing with GitHub Actions for a couple of months now. I had been an ardent Travis loyalist, but given how impressive GitHub Actions are it feels inevitable I will make the switch.

One thing which tripped me up though was how to add GitHub Actions badges to my projects. This is so I can provide some observability and prove my projects build and the tests pass.

It turns out it is really simple, but it doesn't seem to be well documented anywhere. So I thought I'd make a note of it and share it.

To add a GitHub Actions badge to your project just use the following markdown. Obviously fill in the relevant {user}, {repo} and {action} information:

[![Actions Status](https://github.com/{user}/{repo}/workflows/{action}/badge.svg)](https://github.com/{user}/{repo}/actions)
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One thing which can be a little confusing is what the {action} name should be. This should reference the name property in the yaml action config file within your ./.github/workflows directory.

For a Rust project I recently worked on this is Build and Test.

name: Build and Test

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:
  ...
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The only change required for the badge URL is to replace the spaces with %20, so the URL {action} reference becomes Build%20and%20Test.

Here is an example from my Rust project which should make this clearer:

[![Actions Status](https://github.com/RobDWaller/csp-generator/workflows/Build%20and%20Test/badge.svg)](https://github.com/RobDWaller/csp-generator/actions)
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And you can see the working badge here:
Actions Status

I hope this info helps, have fun with GitHub Actions, and if you have any questions drop me a message @RobDWaller.

Top comments (6)

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christopherme profile image
Christopher Elias

Thank you! Really useful! I don't know why to GitHub doesn't specify this on their docs.

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amolgawai profile image
Amol

Is it possible to link to the latest build page instead of the actions page?

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anisha profile image
Anisha Mohanty

This is quite useful. Thanks for sharing!

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jefersonchaves profile image
Jéferson Chaves

Thanks for sharing it, Rob.

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sandordargo profile image
Sandor Dargo

This is great, I've been looking for this in the documentation and after all, once again, I ended up on DEV!
Thanks!

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robdwaller profile image
Rob Waller

Glad it helped!