Workflow Dispatcher | GitHub Action

About

Lightweight composite steps Github Action for triggering a workflow in a different repository and waiting until its completion. Inspired by Trigger Workflow And Wait Action.

Why use this Action?

• Being a composite run steps Action, it is lightweight compared to the original Docker based Action.
• It adds checks to ensure that the correct workflow is identified and waited upon.
• It provides a link to the output of the remote workflow and shows details about the last commit in the branch/tag of the remote repo.

When should you use it?

When creating a workflow which deploys an entire distributed application in one go, spread across multiple repos. Since this Action waits for each workflow to complete, it will provide a holistic view of the deployment status in a single place.

Pre-requisites

• The target workflow should have a Repository Dispatch trigger.
• A personal access token (PAT) will be needed to trigger the remote workflow.
  • The scope of the default GitHub token is limited to the current repository only. Hence, it cannot be used.
  • The PAT should have access to run workflows in the target repository.
  • GitHub guide for creating a PAT is available here.
• Preferably, use this Action on a GitHub hosted runner. This is needed for avoiding issues arising from inconsistencies between timestamps returned from the runner and the GitHub API. This will not be a concern if the system clock on the self-hosted runner is accurate.

Inputs

Outputs

Example Usage

    - name: Deploy Your Service
      uses: adityakar/workflow-dispatcher
      with:
        owner: your-github-org
        repo: your-repo
        token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}
        event_type: dev-deploy
        client_payload: '{"git-ref": "${{ github.event.inputs.git-ref }}"}'
        wait_time: 5
        max_time: 180