Is there a DRY way to calculate and share a value in multiple job steps with GitHub Actions?
In the below workflow, echo ${GITHUB_REF} | cut -d'/' -f3
-${GITHUB_SHA}` is repeated in multiple steps.
name: Test, Build and Deploy
on:
push:
branches:
- master
jobs:
build_and_push:
name: Build and Push
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Docker Build
uses: "actions/docker/cli@master"
with:
args: build . --file Dockerfile -t cflynnus/blog:`echo ${GITHUB_REF} | cut -d'/' -f3`-${GITHUB_SHA}
- name: Docker Tag Latest
uses: "actions/docker/cli@master"
with:
args: tag cflynnus/blog:`echo ${GITHUB_REF} | cut -d'/' -f3`-${GITHUB_SHA} cflynnus/blog:latest
set-output
can be used to define outputs for steps. The outputs can then be used in later steps and evaluated in with
and env
input sections. Also, the step returning outputs should have an id
, which is referred to by the step consuming the outputs.
The following is what that would look like for your example.
name: Test, Build and Deploy
on:
push:
branches:
- master
jobs:
build_and_push:
name: Build and Push
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Set tag var
id: vars
run: echo "docker_tag=$(echo ${GITHUB_REF} | cut -d'/' -f3)-${GITHUB_SHA}" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
- name: Docker Build
uses: "actions/docker/cli@master"
with:
args: build . --file Dockerfile -t cflynnus/blog:${{ steps.vars.outputs.docker_tag }}
- name: Docker Tag Latest
uses: "actions/docker/cli@master"
with:
args: tag cflynnus/blog:${{ steps.vars.outputs.docker_tag }} cflynnus/blog:latest
Here is another example showing how to dynamically set multiple variables to be used by an action.
- name: Set output variables
id: vars
run: |
pr_title="[Test] Add report file $(date +%d-%m-%Y)"
pr_body="This PR was auto-generated on $(date +%d-%m-%Y) \
by [create-pull-request](https://github.com/peter-evans/create-pull-request)."
echo "pr_title=$pr_title" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
echo "pr_body=$pr_body" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
- name: Create Pull Request
uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v4
with:
title: ${{ steps.vars.outputs.pr_title }}
body: ${{ steps.vars.outputs.pr_body }}
Alternatively you can create environment variables.
- name: Set environment variables
run: |
echo "PR_TITLE=[Test] Add report file $(date +%d-%m-%Y)" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "PR_BODY=This PR was auto-generated on $(date +%d-%m-%Y) by [create-pull-request](https://github.com/peter-evans/create-pull-request)." >> $GITHUB_ENV
- name: Create Pull Request
uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v4
with:
title: ${{ env.PR_TITLE }}
body: ${{ env.PR_BODY }}
Update: The docker actions in the first example are deprecated. Please see this answer for the latest way to work with docker in GitHub Actions.
Note: For sharing values between different jobs, see this question.