Action Metadata

A GitHub Action to expose action metadata of a GitHub Action!

Table of Contents

📖 Usage
📋 Inputs
📋 Outputs
📃 Workflow Example
📑 License

📖 Usage

Use this action as a step in a workflow job and give it an id (action-metadata in the following examples).

- name: action-metadata               # Name of the workflow step
  id: action-metadata                 # Give this step an id to reference it later for outputs
  uses: Shresht7/action-metadata@v1   # Use this action

The action will expose the metadata as an output which you can reference in subsequent steps using an expression ${{ steps.<given_id>.outputs.<output> }}. For a list of all available outputs see Outputs.

- name: some-other-action           
  uses: user/some-other-action@v1     # Not a real user and/or action
  with:
    description: ${{ steps.action-metadata.outputs.description }}
    inputs: ${{ steps.action-metadata.outputs.inputs-md-table }}

The entire metadata object is available as a stringified JSON (i.e. string) as the metadata output. You will need to parse this string to use it as an object using fromJSON in an expression or JSON.parse in your action.

- name: some-other-action
  uses: user/some-other-action@v1     # Not a real user and/or action
  with:
    # Use the fromJSON function in the expression to parse metadata as JSON
    name: ${{ fromJSON(steps.action-metadata.outputs.metadata).author }}

📋 Inputs

The action can run on auto-pilot using the default parameters. To change any inputs, pass them along the workflow step.

- name: action-metadata
  id: action-metadata
  uses: Shresht7/action-metadata@v1
  with:
    input-table-alignment: 'c,l,r,l'

Input	Description	Default	Required
`input-table-alignment`	Comma-separated array denoting the alignment of columns ['l' for left, 'c' for center, 'r' for right]	`l,l,r,c`
`output-table-alignment`	Comma-separated array denoting the alignment of columns ['l' for left, 'c' for center, 'r' for right]	`l,l,r,c`

📋 Outputs

The action exposes the entire metadata yaml (metadata) as a stringified JSON. To make the most of this output you will need to parse it using fromJSON or JSON.parse functions.

The name, author and description fields, in addition to being available through the parsed metadata, are also exposed on their own.

This action also exposes markdown-tables for the input and output parameters specified in the metadata file. This was the primary motivation for this action.

Output	Description
`metadata`	stringified JSON representation of the entire action metadata file
`name`	Name of the GitHub Action
`author`	Name of the action's author
`description`	A short description of the action
`inputs-md-table`	Markdown table of the action inputs
`outputs-md-table`	Markdown table of the action outputs

📃 Workflow Example

The Inputs and Outputs tables you see in this readme were generated using this action in conjunction with markdown-slots. To see the complete workflow, see action-readme.yml.

or click here

# =============
# ACTION README
# =============

name: Action Readme

# Activation Events
# =================

on:
  # When the action.yml or this workflow file changes on the main branch
  push:
    branches:
      - main
    paths:
      - action.yml
      - .github/workflows/action-readme.yml

  # Manual workflow dispatch
  workflow_dispatch:

# Jobs
# ====

jobs:
  update-readme:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      # Checkout Repository ✅
      # ======================

      - name: checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      # Retrieve Action Metadata 📜
      # ===========================

      - name: get action metadata
        id: action-metadata
        uses: Shresht7/action-metadata@v1

      # Read this Workflow File 📄
      # ==========================

      - name: read workflow file
        id: read-file
        uses: Shresht7/read-file-action@v1
        with:
          path: .github/workflows/action-readme.yml

      # Markdown Slots 📋
      # =================

      - name: update readme slots
        id: markdown-slots
        uses: Shresht7/markdown-slots@v1
        with:
          slots: |
            - slot: description
              content: ${{ steps.action-metadata.outputs.description }}
            - slot: inputs
              content: ${{ steps.action-metadata.outputs.inputs-md-table }}
            - slot: outputs
              content: ${{ steps.action-metadata.outputs.outputs-md-table }}
            - slot: action-readme-workflow
              content: ${{ toJSON(steps.read-file.outputs.contents) }}

      # Push Changes 🌎
      # ===============

      - name: check for changes
        id: git-diff
        run: |
          if git diff --exit-code; then
            echo "::set-output name=changes_exist::false"
          else
            echo "::set-output name=changes_exist::true"
          fi

      - name: commit and push
        if: ${{ steps.git-diff.outputs.changes_exist == 'true' }}
        run: |
          git config user.name 'github-actions[bot]'
          git config user.email 'github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com'
          git add .
          git commit -m 'Update README.md 📄'
          git push

📑 License

MIT License