GitHub Action for Dispatching Workflows

This action triggers another GitHub Actions workflow, using the workflow_dispatch event.
The workflow must be configured for this event type e.g. on: [workflow_dispatch]

This allows you to chain workflows, the classic use case is have a CI build workflow, trigger a CD release/deploy workflow when it completes. Allowing you to maintain separate workflows for CI and CD, and pass data between them as required.

For details of the workflow_dispatch even see this blog post introducing this type of trigger

Note 1. GitHub now has a native way to chain workflows called "reusable workflows". See the docs on reusing workflows. This approach is somewhat different from workflow_dispatch but it's worth keeping in mind.

Note 2. The GitHub UI will report flows triggered by this action as "manually triggered" even though they have been run programmatically via another workflow and the API.

Note 3. If you want to reference the target workflow by ID, you will need to list them with the following REST API call curl https://api.github.com/repos/{{owner}}/{{repo}}/actions/workflows -H "Authorization: token {{pat-token}}"

Action Inputs

workflow

Required. The name, filename or ID of the workflow to be triggered and run. All three possibilities are used when looking for the workflow. e.g.

workflow: My Workflow
# or
workflow: my-workflow.yaml
# or
workflow: 1218419

inputs

Optional. The inputs to pass to the workflow (if any are configured), this must be a JSON encoded string, e.g. { "myInput": "foobar" }

ref

Optional. The Git reference used with the triggered workflow run. The reference can be a branch, tag, or a commit SHA. If omitted the context ref of the triggering workflow is used. If you want to trigger on pull requests and run the target workflow in the context of the pull request branch, set the ref to ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.ref }}.

repo

Optional. The default behavior is to trigger workflows in the same repo as the triggering workflow, if you wish to trigger in another GitHub repo "externally", then provide the owner + repo name with slash between them e.g. microsoft/vscode.

• When triggering across repos like this, you must provide a token (see below), or you will get an "Resource not accessible by integration" error.
• If the default branch in the other repo is different from the calling repo, you must provide ref input also, or you will get a "No ref found" error.

token

Optional. By default the standard github.token/GITHUB_TOKEN will be used and you no longer need to provide your own token here.

⚠️ IMPORTANT: When using the repo option to call across repos, you must provide the token. In order to do so, create a PAT token with repo rights, and pass it here via a secret, e.g. ${{ secrets.MY_TOKEN }}.

This option is also left for backwards compatibility with older versions where this field was mandatory.

Action Outputs

This Action emits a single output named workflowId.

Example usage

- name: Invoke workflow without inputs
  uses: benc-uk/workflow-dispatch@v1
  with:
    workflow: My Workflow

- name: Invoke workflow with inputs
  uses: benc-uk/workflow-dispatch@v1
  with:
    workflow: Another Workflow
    inputs: '{ "message": "blah blah", "something": true }'

- name: Invoke workflow in another repo with inputs
  uses: benc-uk/workflow-dispatch@v1
  with:
    workflow: my-workflow.yaml
    repo: benc-uk/example
    inputs: '{ "message": "blah blah", "something": false }'
    # Required when using the `repo` option. Either a PAT or a token generated from the GitHub app or CLI
    token: "${{ secrets.MY_TOKEN }}"