Using CLI in workflows

You can script with CLI in Actions workflows.

Note

To learn more about CLI, see About CLI.

CLI is preinstalled on all -hosted runners. For each step that uses CLI, you must set an environment variable called GH_TOKEN to a token with the required scopes.

You can execute any CLI command. For example, this workflow uses the gh issue comment subcommand to add a comment when an issue is opened.

YAML
name: Comment when opened
on:
  issues:
    types:
      - opened
jobs:
  comment:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: gh issue comment $ISSUE --body "Thank you for opening this issue!"
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets._TOKEN }}
          ISSUE: ${{ .event.issue.html_url }}

You can also execute API calls through CLI. For example, this workflow first uses the gh api subcommand to query the GraphQL API and parse the result. Then it stores the result in an environment variable that it can access in a later step. In the second step, it uses the gh issue create subcommand to create an issue containing the information from the first step.

YAML
name: Report remaining open issues
on: 
  schedule: 
    # Daily at 8:20 UTC
    - cron: '20 8 * * *'
jobs:
  track_pr:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: |
          numOpenIssues="$(gh api graphql -F owner=$OWNER -F name=$REPO -f query='
            query($name: String!, $owner: String!) {
              repository(owner: $owner, name: $name) {
                issues(states:OPEN){
                  totalCount
                }
              }
            }
          ' --jq '.data.repository.issues.totalCount')"

          echo 'NUM_OPEN_ISSUES='$numOpenIssues >> $_ENV
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets._TOKEN }}
          OWNER: ${{ .repository_owner }}
          REPO: ${{ .event.repository.name }}
      - run: |
          gh issue create --title "Issue report" --body "$NUM_OPEN_ISSUES issues remaining" --repo $_REPOSITORY
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets._TOKEN }}