Repository Dispatch

A GitHub action to create a repository dispatch event.

Usage

Dispatching an event to the current repository

In the caller workflow file:

jobs:
  Dispatch:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
     steps:
       - name: Repository Dispatch
         uses: peter-evans/repository-dispatch@v4
         with:
           event-type: my-event

In the callee workflow file:

name: MyWorkflow

on:
  repository_dispatch:
    types: [my-event]

Dispatching an event to a remote repository

Use a repo scoped Personal Access Token (PAT).

      - name: Repository Dispatch
        uses: peter-evans/repository-dispatch@v4
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}
          repository: username/my-repo
          event-type: my-event

Action inputs

Name	Description	Default
token	GITHUB_TOKEN or a repo scoped Personal Access Token (PAT). See token for further details.	GITHUB_TOKEN
repository	The full name of the repository to send the dispatch.	github.repository (current repository)
event-type	(required) A custom webhook event name.
client-payload	JSON payload with extra information about the webhook event that your action or workflow may use.	{}

Token

This action creates repository_dispatch events. The default GITHUB_TOKEN token can only be used if you are dispatching the same repository that the workflow is executing in.

To dispatch to a remote repository you must create a Personal Access Token (PAT) with the repo scope and store it as a secret. If you will be dispatching to a public repository then you can use the more limited public_repo scope.

You can also use a fine-grained personal access token (beta). It needs the following permissions on the target repositories:

• contents: read & write
• metadata: read only (automatically selected when selecting the contents permission)

Example

Here is an example setting all of the input parameters.

      - name: Repository Dispatch
        uses: peter-evans/repository-dispatch@v4
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}
          repository: username/my-repo
          event-type: my-event
          client-payload: '{"ref": "${{ github.ref }}", "sha": "${{ github.sha }}"}'

Here is an example on: repository_dispatch workflow to receive the event. Note that repository dispatch events will only trigger a workflow run if the workflow is committed to the default branch.

name: Repository Dispatch
on:
  repository_dispatch:
    types: [my-event]
jobs:
  myEvent:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          ref: ${{ github.event.client_payload.ref }}
      - run: echo ${{ github.event.client_payload.sha }}

Dispatch to multiple repositories

You can dispatch to multiple repositories by using a matrix strategy. In the following example, after the build job succeeds, an event is dispatched to three different repositories.

jobs:
  build:
    # Main workflow job that builds, tests, etc.

  dispatch:
    needs: build
    strategy:
      matrix:
        repo: ['my-org/repo1', 'my-org/repo2', 'my-org/repo3']
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Repository Dispatch
        uses: peter-evans/repository-dispatch@v4
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}
          repository: ${{ matrix.repo }}
          event-type: my-event

Client payload

The GitHub API allows a maximum of 10 top-level properties in the client-payload JSON. If you use more than that you will see an error message like the following.

No more than 10 properties are allowed; 14 were supplied.

For example, this payload will fail because it has more than 10 top-level properties.

client-payload: ${{ toJson(github) }}

To solve this you can simply wrap the payload in a single top-level property. The following payload will succeed.

client-payload: '{"github": ${{ toJson(github) }}}'

Additionally, there is a limitation on the total data size of the client-payload. A very large payload may result in a client_payload is too large error.

Multiline

A multiline client-payload can be set directly in YAML, as in the following example.

      - name: Repository Dispatch
        uses: peter-evans/repository-dispatch@v4
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}
          repository: username/my-repo
          event-type: my-event
          client-payload: |-
            {
              "repo": {
                "name": "${{ github.repository }}",
                "branch": "${{ needs.build_cfg.outputs.REPO_BRANCH }}",
                "tag": "${{ needs.build_cfg.outputs.REPO_TAG }}"
              },
              "deployment": {
                "project": "${{ env.MY_PROJECT }}",
                "container": "${{ env.MY_CONTAINER }}",
                "deploy_msg": "${{ env.SLACK_DEPLOY_MSG }}",
              }
            }

License

MIT