User input in github actions (specify repo branch, etc)

Question

I want to create a github action to create an integration test environment. We already have a dockerized script which can do this, however, the environment is made up of 2+ repositories. So, in order to make this effective during development, we'd need to specify the branches of the other repos.

For example, let's say I have a PR in repo: frontend, branch: my-feature-brach. It requires repo: backend, branch: their-feature-branch. I'd like to kick off a build from my PR where it uses the branch of that PR (in the frontend repo), and ask me which branch to use for the backend repo.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

You can define manually executable workflows, with inputs.

on: 
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      environment:
        description: 'Define env name'     
        required: true
        default: 'prod'
      branch:
        description: 'Define branch name'     
        required: true
        default: 'master'

Than you can use these predefined parameters like:

jobs:
  printInputs:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - run: |
        echo "Env: ${{ github.event.inputs.environment }}" 
        echo "Branch: ${{ github.event.inputs.branch }}"

I think you can support your use case with that. More details here.