Reusable workflows in GitHub Actions

github-actions-workflows.md

Reusable Workflows in GitHub Actions

Assuming you have the root-level main.yml and a couple of reusable workflows main-a.yml and main-b.yml.

Your goal is to run the the workflows A and B automatically as part of the main (root) workflow as well as being able to fire up them manually one by one for different environments.

The top-level (root) workflow would looks something like this:

.github/workflows/main.yml

name: CI/CD

on:
  # Fires up automatically on push to the main branch or push of a tag such as v1.3.0
  push:
    branches: [main]
    tags:
      - "v*"
  # Fires up automatically when a pull requeest (PR) is created or updates against the main branch
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]
  # Fires up automatically nightly at 7am
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 7 * * *"
  # Fires up manually by repository/organization admin against the target environment
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      environment:
        description: "Environment to deploy to"
        type: environment
        default: "test"
        required: true

env:
  NODE_VERSION: 20

jobs:
  setup:
    name: "Setup"
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - use: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v3
      - run: 'echo "..."'
  main-a:
    name: "Main A"
    uses: ./.github/workflows/main-a.yml
    needs: [setup]
    secrets: inherit
    with:
      environment: ${{ inputs.environment || 'test' }}
  main-b:
    name: "Main B"
    uses: ./.github/workflows/main-b.yml
    needs: [setup]
    secrets: inherit
    with:
      environment: ${{ inputs.environment || 'test' }}

While, a child workflow looks somewhat like this:

.github/workflows/main-a.yml

name: Main A

on:
  # Fires up by a call from the parent (root) workflow (main.yml)
  workflow_call:
    inputs:
      environment:
        type: string
        default: "test"
  # Fires up manually by repisotory/organization admin
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      environment:
        type: environment
        default: "test"
        required: true

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment:
      name: ${{ inputs.environment }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - run: 'echo "xxx"'
        env:
          SOME_SECRET: "${{ secrets.SOME_SECRET }}"

NOTE:

• In the example above the child (reusable) workflow (main-a.yml) has access to all secrets also available in the root-level workflow, because at the root level there is secrets: inherit argument is used.
• The default environment inside of the deploy job of the reusable workflow is set to test.