How to pass values to a Gitlab CI Job

Question

I have a GitLab ci job to download and build few files and then publish to another server. I have done a POC and was successful. The problem is that I would like to customize the job when triggered manually or via API. How can i pass the dynamic values(user given) to reflect in CI job (like a filename, format etc)?

I am using Windows runner.

I saw trigger variables and environment variables but can be retrieved while execution once the value is set in UI. I want a bit different where I will get the values from user.

Is it not possible in GitLab?

Edit:

A bit more info on how I'm using the pipeline. My pipeline has two stages - build and deploy. I want the build to run once, but I want to be able to call deploy multiple to deploy to different server. I can use the variable to determine to which server I want to deploy. Through GitLab UI this is possible - i can set variables for pipeline and also for job that overrides the pipeline variable. I just want to do the same thing through API.

Answer 1

You can pass variables when starting a pipeline: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/pipelines/#run-a-pipeline-manually

Pipelines can be manually executed, with predefined or manually-specified variables.

These variables can be also specified on the API call: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/pipelines.html#create-a-new-pipeline

An array containing the variables available in the pipeline, matching the structure [{ ‘key’ => ‘UPLOAD_TO_S3’, ‘value’ => ‘true’ }]