Octokit Request Action

A GitHub Action to send queries to GitHub's GraphQL API

Usage

Minimal example

name: Log latest release
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  logLatestRelease:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: octokit/[email protected]
        id: get_latest_release
        with:
          query: |
            query release($owner:String!,$repo:String!) {
              repository(owner:$owner,name:$repo) {
                releases(first:1) {
                  nodes {
                    name
                    createdAt
                    tagName
                    description
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          owner: ${{ github.event.repository.owner.name }}
          repo: ${{ github.event.repository.name }}
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
      - run: "echo 'latest release: ${{ steps.get_latest_release.outputs.data }}'"

You can also use the variables parameter to pass variables.

- uses: octokit/[email protected]
  with:
    query: |
      query release($owner:String!,$repo:String!) {
        repository(owner:$owner,name:$repo) {
          releases(first:1) {
            nodes {
              name
              createdAt
              tagName
              description
            }
          }
        }
      }
    variables: |
      owner: ${{ github.event.repository.owner.name }}
      repo: ${{ github.event.repository.name }}
  env:
    GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

To access deep values of outputs.data, use fromJSON().

Debugging

To see additional debug logs, create a secret with the name: ACTIONS_STEP_DEBUG and value true.

How it works

octokit/graphql-action is using @octokit/graphql internally with the addition that requests are automatically authenticated using the GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable. It is required to prevent rate limiting, as all anonymous requests from the same origin count against the same low rate.

The actions sets data output to the response data. Note that it is a string, you should use fromJSON() to access any value of the response. The action also sets headers (again, to a JSON string) and status.

Preview Media Types

New features of graphql require the use of an Accept header with a preview media-type. This is supported with a mediaType property, e.g.

steps:
  - uses: octokit/[email protected]
    with:
      query: |
        query  pullRequest(
          $repo:String!
          $owner:String!) {
          repository(name:$repo, owner:$owner) { 
            pullRequests(last:1) {
              nodes {
                number
                mergeStateStatus
              }
            }
          }
        }
      owner: ${{ github.event.repository.owner.name }}
      repo: ${{ github.event.repository.name }}
      mediaType: |
        previews:
        - merge-info

Troubleshooting

Input variables

It's important to remark input variables are converted to lowercase at runtime. This happens with GitHub Actions by design¹.

Example

In the following example, the variable itemId is casted to itemid so, when trying to use it in the query, the execution will fail because of a missing variable: itemId

query release($itemId: String!) {
  ...

# Fails with "Error: Variable $itemId of type String! was provided invalid value"
itemId: "randomId"

The recommendation¹ is to use variables in lowercase to avoid this kind of problems:

# The variable name must be lower-case:
query release($itemid: String!) {
  ...

# Both: in the query and action var declaration:
itemid: "randomId"

License

MIT

Footnotes

1. https://docs.github.com/en/actions/creating-actions/metadata-syntax-for-github-actions#inputs ↩ ↩²