Say you need to get current branch name in your GitHub Actions workflow.
You can use the GITHUB_REF variable which contains a full path like refs/heads/feature-branch-1 but you need only the last pah segment i.e feature-branch-1.
You need to add a step for extracting the branch name from the $GITHUB_REF variable and make it the step output as follows:
- name: Extract branch name
shell: bash
run: echo "##[set-output name=branch;]$(echo ${GITHUB_REF#refs/heads/})"
id: extract_branch
Please note that if you are using a pull request trigger to run your GitHub action, the GITHUB_REF variable will contain something like refs/pull/421/merge so if you will try to git push to that name it will most likely fail.
As a solution, you can use references on the GitHub context in your YAML e.g. $.
You can also use the nelonoel/branch-name action as follows:
name: build
on: push
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v1
- run: npm ci
- uses: nelonoel/branch-name@v1
# Use branch name for whatever purpose
- run: echo ${BRANCH_NAME}
This is another example of a workflow for push and pull_request triggers:
name: getBranchName
on: [pull_request, push]
jobs:
which_branch:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
# extract branch name
- name: Extract branch name
if: github.event_name != 'pull_request'
shell: bash
run: echo "::set-env name=BRANCH_NAME::$(echo ${GITHUB_REF#refs/heads/})"
id: extract_branch
# extract branch name on pull request
- name: Print branch name
if: github.event_name == 'pull_request'
run: echo "::set-env name=BRANCH_NAME::$(echo ${GITHUB_HEAD_REF})"
# print branch name
- name: Get branch name
run: echo 'The branch name is' $BRANCH_NAME