Invoke GitHub Actions workflow manually and pass parameters

Question

I want to pass some dynamic parameters and invoke my GitHub Actions workflow manually (ideally via some API). Is this possible?

Answer 1

With the workflow_dispatch event trigger , you can do the manual triggers easily.

Flow:

on: 
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      logLevel:
        description: 'Log level'     
        required: true
        default: 'warning'
      tags:
        description: 'Test scenario tags'  

Manual trigger screenshot:

Blog post announcement reference, https://github.blog/changelog/2020-07-06-github-actions-manual-triggers-with-workflow_dispatch/

Answer 2

I think the correct answer to this is using a repository_dispatch NOT a workflow_dispatch .

Only repository dispatch allows you to trigger a workflow from an API call.

Docs

Hand Holding example

Summary:

• URL Endpoint:

https://api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}/dispatches

• Example cURL call:

curl -X POST -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" -H "authorization: Bearer <token>" https://api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}/dispatches -d '{"event_type": "type1","client_payload": {"key1": "Hello from CRUD"}}'

Answer 3

To trigger a workflow_dispatch via API, the documentation can be found at https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/rest/reference/actions#create-a-workflow-dispatch-event

POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/workflows/{workflow_id}/dispatches

where {workflow_id} can also be the filename of the workflow (which makes things a lot easier).

An example curl from the documentation:

curl \
  -X POST \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" \
  https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/hello-world/actions/workflows/42/dispatches \
  -d '{"ref":"ref"}'