`bisgardo/github-action-parse-ref`

GitHub action for parsing a Git ref into its type and name.

Inputs

ref (required): The ref in the format of a full ref refs/<type>/<name> or a shorthand without refs/<type>.
default-ref-type (default: tags): The type to use if ref is a shorthand refname.

Outputs

ref-type: The type of the ref (heads for branches, tags for tags, etc.).
ref-name: The name of the branch, tag, etc. as defined by ref-type.
ref: The fully resolved valid ref. Empty if ref is invalid.

The action doesn't fail if the input ref is invalid. For example, the parsing will succeed if the ref ends with "/" which is invalid. The ref output can be used to detect if the input ref is invalid as it is always valid or empty.

Example

The following workflow snippet defines a single job my_job which applies the default ref type heads to the shorthand ref my_branch and outputs the ref type, name, and full ref.

A subsequent step prints all the output values to illustrate how the extracted group matches are accessed.

An additional job my_dependent_job is defined to illustrate how to access the outputs from other jobs that needs the one containing the action.

The example uses the ubuntu-latest runner, but the action works on any type of machine.

...
jobs:
  my_job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    outputs:
      full-ref: "${{steps.my_step.outputs.ref}}"
    steps:
    - uses: bisgardo/github-action-parse-ref@v1
      id: my_step
      with:
        ref: 'my_branch'
        default-ref-type: 'heads'
    - run: |
        echo "type: '${{steps.my_step.outputs.ref-type}}'"     # "type: heads"
        echo "name: '${{steps.my_step.outputs.ref-name}}'"     # "name: my_branch"
        echo "full ref: '${{steps.my_step.outputs.ref}}'"      # "full ref: refs/heads/my_branch"
        
  my_dependent_job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: my_job
    steps:
      - run: |
          echo "full ref: ${{needs.my_job.outputs.full-ref}}"  # "full ref: refs/heads/my_branch"

The parsed ref components are available in subsequent steps of the job my_job as the template variables

ref-type: ${{steps.my_step.outputs.ref-type}}
ref-name: ${{steps.my_step.outputs.ref-name}}
ref: ${{steps.my_step.outputs.ref}}

Since we declared the output block in my_job, one of the variables (ref) is also exposed (as full-ref) to the dependent job my_dependent_job:

full-ref: ${{needs.my_job.outputs.full-ref}}