How can I filter for "Issue Type" within a Job?

[chdanielmueller]

Why are you starting this discussion?

Question

What GitHub Actions topic or product is this about?

Workflow Configuration

Discussion Details

We currently have some workflows that run on issue:opened.
We then start different jobs based on a label like "bug" or "task".
Nowadays issues can have types and we would like to switch from using labels to types.
How can we filter jobs based on the issue type?

Current:

name: Project Management

on:
  issues:
    types:
      - opened

jobs:
  bug-job:
    name: Job for bug
    if: contains(github.event.issue.labels.*.name, 'bug')
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

Expectation:

name: Project Management

on:
  issues:
    types:
      - opened

jobs:
  bug-job:
    name: Job for bug
    if: github.event.issue.type == 'bug'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

I cannot find the field in the REST API and therefore think it is not available?

[skyy4]

Hey!, I actually ran into this same issue recently
You’re right: unfortunately, github.event.issue.type doesn’t exist (yet). Even though GitHub now supports issue types like “bug” and “task”, those aren’t currently exposed in the GitHub Actions event payload or REST API — at least not in a way we can directly filter on in the workflow.
So the if: github.event.issue.type == 'bug' check won’t work right now.
so you can try :
If you’re using issue forms (YAML templates in .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/), you can add a hidden field to store the issue type, like this:
name: Type
id: type
type: hidden
value: bug
Then in your workflow, you can do something like:
if: contains(github.event.issue.body, 'value: bug')
Or even better, use a custom pattern to extract it more reliably.
Hopefully Soon
Would be great if GitHub added native support for this — maybe through GraphQL metadata or issue.type in the event context. Fingers crossed!
hope that works

[CollatzConjecture]

at the moment issue types aren't exposed in the webhook payload yet, the github.event.issue.type field doesn't exist in Actions context.

Current workaround: Keep using labels for now, but automate the label assignment based on issue type:

name: Project Management
on:
  issues:
    types: [opened]

jobs:
  label-by-type:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Add label based on issue type
        uses: actions/github-script@v7
        with:
          script: |
            // You'd need to parse the issue body or use API calls
            // to determine type and add corresponding label
            
  bug-job:
    needs: label-by-type
    if: contains(github.event.issue.labels.*.name, 'bug')
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

i think issue types are still relatively new therefore GitHub hasn't updated the webhook schema to include them yet, stick with labels until they add native support

[CollatzConjecture]

at the moment issue types aren't exposed in the webhook payload yet, the github.event.issue.type field doesn't exist in Actions context.

Current workaround: Keep using labels for now, but automate the label assignment based on issue type:

name: Project Management
on:
  issues:
    types: [opened]

jobs:
  label-by-type:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Add label based on issue type
        uses: actions/github-script@v7
        with:
          script: |
            // You'd need to parse the issue body or use API calls
            // to determine type and add corresponding label
            
  bug-job:
    needs: label-by-type
    if: contains(github.event.issue.labels.*.name, 'bug')
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

i think issue types are still relatively new therefore GitHub hasn't updated the webhook schema to include them yet, stick with labels until they add native support

or you can use issue templates with specific identifiers in the body, then parse those:

bug-job:
  if: contains(github.event.issue.body, '[TYPE:BUG]')