Get run id after triggering a github workflow dispatch event

Question

I am triggering a workflow run via github's rest api. But github doesn't send any data in the response body (204). How do i get the run id of the trigger request made? I know about the getRunsList api, which would return runs for a workflow id, then i can get the latest run, but this can cause issues when two requests are submitted at almost the same time.

Answer 1

This is not currently possible to get the run_id associated to the dispatch API call in the dispatch response itself, but there is a way to find this out if you can edit your worflow file a little.

You need to dispatch the workflow with an input like this:

curl "https://api.github.com/repos/$OWNER/$REPO/actions/workflows/$WORKFLOW/dispatches" -s \
     -H "Authorization: Token $TOKEN" \
     -d '{
        "ref":"master",
        "inputs":{
            "id":"12345678"
        }
    }'

Also edit your workflow yaml file with an optionnal input (named id here). Also, place it as the first job, a job which has a single step with the same name as the input id value (this is how we will get the id back using the API!):

name: ID Example

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      id:
        description: 'run identifier'
        required: false
jobs:
  id:
    name: Workflow ID Provider
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: ${{github.event.inputs.id}}
        run: echo run identifier ${{ inputs.id }}

The trick here is to use name: ${{github.event.inputs.id}}

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

Then the flow is the following:

• run the dispatch API call along with the input named id in this case with a random value

  POST https://api.github.com/repos/$OWNER/$REPO/actions/workflows/$WORKFLOW/dispatches
  

• in a loop get the runs that have been created since now minus 5 minutes (the delta is to avoid any issue with timings):

  GET https://api.github.com/repos/$OWNER/$REPO/actions/runs?created=>$run_date_filter
  

example

• in the run API response, you will get a jobs_url that you will call:

  GET https://api.github.com/repos/$OWNER/$REPO/actions/runs/[RUN_ID]/jobs
  

• the job API call above returns the list of jobs, as you have declared the id jobs as 1st job it will be in first position. It also gives you the steps with the name of the steps. Something like this:

{
  "id": 3840520726,
  "run_id": 1321007088,
  "run_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/$OWNER/$REPO/actions/runs/1321007088",
  "run_attempt": 1,
  "node_id": "CR_kwDOEi1ZxM7k6bIW",
  "head_sha": "4687a9bb5090b0aadddb69cc335b7d9e80a1601d",
  "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/$OWNER/$REPO/actions/jobs/3840520726",
  "html_url": "https://github.com/$OWNER/$REPO/runs/3840520726",
  "status": "completed",
  "conclusion": "success",
  "started_at": "2021-10-08T15:54:40Z",
  "completed_at": "2021-10-08T15:54:43Z",
  "name": "Hello world",
  "steps": [
    {
      "name": "Set up job",
      "status": "completed",
      "conclusion": "success",
      "number": 1,
      "started_at": "2021-10-08T17:54:40.000+02:00",
      "completed_at": "2021-10-08T17:54:42.000+02:00"
    },
    {
      "name": "12345678", <=============== HERE
      "status": "completed",
      "conclusion": "success",
      "number": 2,
      "started_at": "2021-10-08T17:54:42.000+02:00",
      "completed_at": "2021-10-08T17:54:43.000+02:00"
    },
    {
      "name": "Complete job",
      "status": "completed",
      "conclusion": "success",
      "number": 3,
      "started_at": "2021-10-08T17:54:43.000+02:00",
      "completed_at": "2021-10-08T17:54:43.000+02:00"
    }
  ],
  "check_run_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/$OWNER/$REPO/check-runs/3840520726",
  "labels": [
    "ubuntu-latest"
  ],
  "runner_id": 1,
  "runner_name": "Hosted Agent",
  "runner_group_id": 2,
  "runner_group_name": "GitHub Actions"
}

The name of the id step is returning your input value, so you can safely confirm that it is this run that was triggered by your dispatch call

Here is an implementation of this flow in python, it will return the workflow run id:

import random
import string
import datetime
import requests
import time

# edit the following variables
owner = "YOUR_ORG" 
repo = "YOUR_REPO"
workflow = "dispatch.yaml"
token = "YOUR_TOKEN"

authHeader = { "Authorization": f"Token {token}" }

# generate a random id
run_identifier = ''.join(random.choices(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits, k=15))
# filter runs that were created after this date minus 5 minutes
delta_time = datetime.timedelta(minutes=5)
run_date_filter = (datetime.datetime.utcnow()-delta_time).strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M") 

r = requests.post(f"https://api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/workflows/{workflow}/dispatches",
    headers= authHeader,
    json= {
        "ref":"master",
        "inputs":{
            "id": run_identifier
        }
    })

print(f"dispatch workflow status: {r.status_code} | workflow identifier: {run_identifier}")
workflow_id = ""

while workflow_id == "":
        
    r = requests.get(f"https://api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/runs?created=%3E{run_date_filter}",
        headers = authHeader)
    runs = r.json()["workflow_runs"]

    if len(runs) > 0:
        for workflow in runs:
            jobs_url = workflow["jobs_url"]
            print(f"get jobs_url {jobs_url}")

            r = requests.get(jobs_url, headers= authHeader)
            
            jobs = r.json()["jobs"]
            if len(jobs) > 0:
                # we only take the first job, edit this if you need multiple jobs
                job = jobs[0]
                steps = job["steps"]
                if len(steps) >= 2:
                    second_step = steps[1] # if you have position the run_identifier step at 1st position
                    if second_step["name"] == run_identifier:
                        workflow_id = job["run_id"]
                else:
                    print("waiting for steps to be executed...")
                    time.sleep(3)
            else:
                print("waiting for jobs to popup...")
                time.sleep(3)
    else:
        print("waiting for workflows to popup...")
        time.sleep(3)

print(f"workflow_id: {workflow_id}")

gist link

Sample output

$ python3 github_action_dispatch_runid.py
dispatch workflow status: 204 | workflow identifier: Z7YPF6DD1YP2PTM
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321463229/jobs
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321463229/jobs
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321463229/jobs
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321475221/jobs
waiting for steps to be executed...
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321463229/jobs
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321475221/jobs
waiting for steps to be executed...
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321463229/jobs
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321475221/jobs
waiting for steps to be executed...
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321463229/jobs
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321475221/jobs
get jobs_url https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs/1321463229/jobs
workflow_id: 1321475221

It would have been easier if there was a way to retrieve the workflow inputs via API but there is no way to do this at this moment

Note that in the worflow file, I use ${{github.event.inputs.id}} because ${{inputs.id}} doesn't work. It seems inputs is not being evaluated when we use it as the step name

Answer 2

Get WORKFLOWID

gh workflow list --repo <repo-name>

Trigger workflow of type workflow_dispatch

gh workflow run $WORKFLOWID --repo <repo-name>

It doesnot return the run-id which is required get the status of execution

Get latest run-id WORKFLOW_RUNID

gh run list -w $WORKFLOWID --repo <repo> -L 1 --json databaseId | jq '.[]| .databaseId'

Get workflow run details

gh run view --repo <repo> $WORKFLOW_RUNID

This is workaround that we do. It is not perfect, but should work.