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Meir Gabay

Posted on Dec 4, 2021

How To Test A GitHub Action

#actionshackathon21 #devops #cicd #github

My Workflow

The project unfor19/hero-action is an All-In-One action to a test GitHub Action.

Submission Categories

Maintainer Must-Haves
Wacky Wildcards - I'm adding this one because it's a "hacky" way of using GitHub Actions to test an action (feels like a recursion)

Yaml File or Link to Code

unfor19 / hero-action

All-in-one action to develop and maintain GitHub Actions.

hero-action

An All-In-One action to test a GitHub Action.

Tested in unfor19/hero-action-test

Usage

Generate a new Personal Access Token with the scope: repo + workflow. Keep this token in a safe place we'll use it later on.

Add the following workflow .github/workflows/testing.yml to your action's repository, e.g. hero-action

name: testing
on:
  push:
    branches: [master]
    paths-ignore:
      - "README.md"
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  dispatch_test_action:
    name: Dispatch Test Action
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Workflow Dispatch Status
        uses: unfor19/hero-action@v1.0.2
        with:
          action: "dispatch-status"
          src_repository: ${{ github.repository }}
          src_workflow_name: ${{ github.workflow }}
          src_sha: ${{ github.sha }}
          target_repository: ${{ github.repository }}-test
          target_workflow_name: "test-action.yml"
          gh_token: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }} # scope: repo + workflow

Create a new GitHub repository to test your action, e.g. hero-action-test, add…

View on GitHub

The action repository, my-repo, triggers a workflow in the test repository, my-repo-test. Meanwhile, the my-repo is "stuck" with the commit status pending.
The repository my-repo-test tests the action by using it, see unfor19/hero-action-test
Upon success/failure, the test action my-repo-test creates a commit status in the action's repository, this updates the status of the pending workflow with success or failure