github workflow - input type choice with multi-select option

[porottasambar]

Hi,

Is there any way i can enable multi-select dropdown option in workflow_dispatch with input type choice?

[umassahu]

As per my knowledge this is not yet implemented

[porottasambar]

thank you for your info @umassahu much appreciated.

[alxgomz]

No that is indeed not implemented. There is an issue that has gotten some traction but no one created a product feedback linked to it so I'll be doing it hoping that people who participated in this issue and thumb'ed it up will upvote here too:
actions/runner#2076

I'll also copy verbatim this issue description which is more complete:

Describe the enhancement.
Current set of input types doesn't cover some use-cases for manual workflows.

We use a single gh-action as an entrypoint of deploying packages from our monorepo, and sometimes we need > to manually deploy several packages simultaneously. Up until now we just went with a set of Booleans, so we could tick all the packages we needed to run our CI/CD against via UI. However, we speedily reached a actions/runner#1928

Introducing an input type that would store a, say, json array could help:

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
   inputs:
     name:
       type: multi-choice
       description: select packages
       options: 
       - go-service1
       - go-service2
       - py-service1

...and in fact would be more logical with less copy-paste overhead for our use-case

[DevonBT]

See also https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/8774, a (very active) discussion about how the limit of 10 workflow inputs is making job configuration difficult. Some users suggest multi-select options as an excellent workaround. There seems to be a lot of desire for this feature.

[momentmaker]

please I need this for my family

[scottcudney-apporto]

Your family depends on GitHub Actions drop-down menus?

[Andrei-Vasil]

Yours doesn't?

[JuanChurioRivera]

what a burn

[ap0h]

Yap I came here looking for exactly the same thing.

[james-arawhanui]

Currently working around the problem by listing multiple 'options' sets for the user to choose from, and leaving the validation

• up to them (while selecting the options)
• extra validation steps in a shell script, called by the workflow

so leaving the team to be adults, and giving them a slightly-lagged warning (and broken build) if they get it wrong, to learn for next time and prevent bad builds (which can also be seen as deployments if you do GitOps).

Feels like if it's getting this complex we should be moving to a more complex CD stack with more UI support, I don't exactly blame GitHub Actions team for not wanting this extra scope.

[clarkritchie]

Here is a way to pass arbitrary JSON, including arrays, to actions that have workflow_dispatch triggers, which can effectively simulate a multi-choice list in an action. This also is a way to get around the 10 input limit.

$ JSON_DATA=$(cat <<EOF
{
  "foo": "foo",
  "bar": [ "bar", "baz" ]
}
EOF
)

# tidy it up to one line
$ JSON=$(echo $JSON_DATA | tr -d '\n' | tr -d '[:space:]')

# run the workflow
$ gh workflow run foo-bar-baz.yaml --ref example -f config=${JSON}
✓ Created workflow_dispatch event for foo-bar-baz.yaml at example

To see runs for this workflow, try: gh run list --workflow=foo-bar-baz.yaml

Action:

name: Foo Bar Baz

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      config:
        description: "Configuration (as JSON)"
        required: true

jobs:
  foo-bar-baz:
    runs-on: small
    steps:
      - name: Parse JSON Inputs
        id: input-values
        run: |
          json_data='${{ inputs.config }}'
          echo "foo=$(echo $json_data | jq -r '.foo')" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
          echo "bar=$(echo $json_data | jq -c '.bar')" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT

      - name: Echo JSON
        run: |
          echo "Foo is ${{ steps.input-values.outputs.foo }}"
          echo "Bar is ${{ steps.input-values.outputs.bar }}"

Output:

Run echo "Foo is foo"
  echo "Foo is foo"
  echo "Bar is ["bar","baz"]"
  shell: /usr/bin/bash -e {0}
Foo is foo
Bar is [bar,baz]

[judeokafor]

I came here looking for the same thing. Strange how many people want this but it's not yet a feature

[garysassano]

It doesn't make any sense that you have to implement workarounds like this:

workflow_dispatch:
  inputs:
    environment:
      description: Deploy environment name
      type: choice
      required: false
      options:
        - staging
        - production
        - all
      default: all

And then

${{ (github.event_name == 'workflow_dispatch' && inputs.environment == 'all') && fromJSON('["staging", "production"]') }}

The JSON array could be handled directly by a multi-select dropdown input instead.