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. 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 2. 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}}"

Inputs

workflow

Required. The name or ID of the workflow to trigger and run. This is the name declared in the YAML, not the filename

token

Required. A GitHub access token (PAT) with write access to the repo in question. NOTE. The automatically provided token e.g. ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} can not be used, GitHub prevents this token from being able to fire the workflow_dispatch and repository_dispatch event. The reasons are explained in the docs.

The solution is to manually create a PAT and store it as a secret e.g. ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_TOKEN }}

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

Outputs

None

Example usage

- name: Invoke workflow without inputs
  uses: benc-uk/workflow-dispatch@v1
  with:
    workflow: My Workflow
    token: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_TOKEN }}

- name: Invoke workflow with inputs
  uses: benc-uk/workflow-dispatch@v1
  with:
    workflow: Another Workflow
    token: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_TOKEN }}
    inputs: '{ "message": "blah blah", "debug": true }'

- name: Invoke workflow in another repo with inputs
  uses: benc-uk/workflow-dispatch@v1
  with:
    workflow: Some Workflow
    repo: benc-uk/example
    token: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_TOKEN }}
    inputs: '{ "message": "blah blah", "debug": true }'