There's a plethora of triggers you can use to run a GitHub Action. You can run it on a schedule, on a push or a pull request, or even on a release.
Today the spotlight is on workflow_dispatch
, a trigger that allows you to manually trigger a GitHub Action, without having to push or create a pull request. Bonus: you can also pass custom parameters!
How to use workflow_dispatch
To use workflow_dispatch
, you need to add it to the on
section of your workflow file:
name: Manual trigger
on:
workflow_dispatch:
That's it! Now you can manually trigger your GitHub Action by going to the Actions tab of your repository and clicking on the "Run workflow" button:
Live Demo
If you want to see it in action (pun intended!) you can watch the video below. Otherwise, if you prefer to read, you can jump to the next section.
Passing inputs
You can also pass inputs to your workflow. To do so, you need to add an inputs
section to your workflow_dispatch
trigger. The only required field is the description
which will also be rendered in the UI:
name: Manual trigger
on:
workflow_dispatch:
inputs:
name:
description: "Who to greet"
default: "World"
You can now pass an input to your workflow by clicking on the "Run workflow" button and filling the input field:
You can then access the input in your workflow file from the github.event.inputs
object:
name: Manual trigger
on:
workflow_dispatch:
inputs:
name:
description: "Who to greet"
default: "World"
jobs:
hello:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Hello Step
run: echo "Hello ${{ github.event.inputs.name }}"
In this case, the variable we read is name
, which is the name of the input we specified in the workflow_dispatch
trigger.
Input types
You can also specify the type of the input. There are many types, for example: string
, boolean
and choice
. If you don't specify a type, the default is string
.
-
string
: will render a simple text input. -
boolean
: is submitted through a checkbox. -
choice
: renders a dropdown menu to force the selection of some specific values.
You can also specify if the field is required
and add a default value.
Lean more
workflow_dispatch
is the keyword you need to run a GitHub Action on demand, without having to push or create a pull request.
If you want to learn more on GitHub Actions, let me recommend you my YouTube Playlist with all the videos I made about GitHub Actions. Click here.
Thanks for reading this article, I hope you found it interesting!
I recently launched my Discord server to talk about Open Source and Web Development, feel free to join: https://discord.gg/bqwyEa6We6
Do you like my content? You might consider subscribing to my YouTube channel! It means a lot to me ❤️
You can find it here:
Feel free to follow me to get notified when new articles are out ;)
Top comments (0)