Workflow Webhook Action

A Github workflow action to call a remote webhook endpoint with a JSON or form-urlencoded payload, and support for BASIC authentication. A hash signature is passed with each request, derived from the payload and a configurable secret token. The hash signature is identical to that which a regular Github webhook would generate, and sent in a header field named X-Hub-Signature. Therefore any existing Github webhook signature validation will continue to work. For more information on how to valiate the signature, see https://docs.github.com/webhooks/securing/.

By default, the values of the following GitHub workflow environment variables are sent in the payload: GITHUB_REPOSITORY, GITHUB_REF, GITHUB_HEAD_REF, GITHUB_SHA, GITHUB_EVENT_NAME and GITHUB_WORKFLOW. For more information on what is contained in these variables, see https://help.github.com/en/actions/automating-your-workflow-with-github-actions/using-environment-variables.

These values map to the payload as follows:

{
    "event": "GITHUB_EVENT_NAME",
    "repository": "GITHUB_REPOSITORY",
    "commit": "GITHUB_SHA",
    "ref": "GITHUB_REF",
    "head": "GITHUB_HEAD_REF",
    "workflow": "GITHUB_WORKFLOW"
}

If you are interested in receiving more comprehensive data about the GitHub event than just the above fields, then the action can be configured to send the whole JSON payload of the GitHub event, as per the GITHUB_EVENT_PATH variable in the environment variable documentation referenced above. The official documentation and reference for the payload itself can be found here: https://developer.github.com/webhooks/event-payloads/, and the details on how to configure it, is further down in the Usage section of this README.

Additional (custom) data can also be added/merged to the payload (see further down).

Usage

The following are example snippets for a Github yaml workflow configuration.

Send the JSON (default) payload to a webhook:

    - name: Invoke deployment hook
      uses: distributhor/workflow-webhook@v1
      env:
        webhook_url: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_URL }}
        webhook_secret: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_SECRET }}

Will deliver a payload with the following properties:

{
    "event": "push",
    "repository": "owner/project",
    "commit": "a636b6f0861bbee98039bf3df66ee13d8fbc9c74",
    "ref": "refs/heads/master",
    "head": "",
    "workflow": "Build and deploy"
}

Add additional data to the payload:

    - name: Invoke deployment hook
      uses: distributhor/workflow-webhook@v1
      env:
        webhook_url: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_URL }}
        webhook_secret: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_SECRET }}
        data: '{ "weapon": "hammer", "drink" : "beer" }'

The additional information will become available on a data property, and now look like:

{
    "event": "push",
    "repository": "owner/project",
    "commit": "a636b6f0861bbee98039bf3df66ee13d8fbc9c74",
    "ref": "refs/heads/master",
    "head": "",
    "workflow": "Build and deploy",
    "data": {
        "weapon": "hammer",
        "drink": "beer"
    }
}

Send a form-urlencoded payload instead:

    - name: Invoke deployment hook
      uses: distributhor/workflow-webhook@v1
      env:
        webhook_type: 'form-urlencoded'
        webhook_url: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_URL }}
        webhook_secret: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_SECRET }}
        data: 'weapon=hammer&drink=beer'

Will set the Content-Type header to application/x-www-form-urlencoded and deliver:

"event=push&repository=owner/project&commit=a636b6f0....&weapon=hammer&drink=beer"

Finally, if you prefer to receive the whole original GitHub payload as JSON (as opposed to the default JSON snippet above), then configure the webhook with a webhook_type of json-extended:

    - name: Invoke deployment hook
      uses: distributhor/workflow-webhook@v1
      env:
        webhook_type: 'json-extended'
        webhook_url: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_URL }}
        webhook_secret: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_SECRET }}
        data: '{ "weapon": "hammer", "drink" : "beer" }'

You can still add custom JSON data, which will be available on a data property, included on the GitHub payload. Importantly, the sending of the whole GitHub payload is only supported as JSON, and not currently available as urlencoded form parameters.

Arguments

  webhook_url: "https://your.webhook"

Required. The HTTP URI of the webhook endpoint to invoke. The endpoint must accept an HTTP POST request.

  webhook_secret: "Y0uR5ecr3t"

Required. The secret with which to generate the signature hash.

  webhook_auth: "username:password"

Credentials to be used for BASIC authentication against the endpoint. If not configured, authentication is assumed not to be required. If configured, it must follow the format username:password, which will be used as the BASIC auth credential.

  webhook_type: "json | form-urlencoded | json-extended"

The default endpoint type is JSON. The argument is only required if you wish to send urlencoded form data. Otherwise it's optional.

  data: "Additional JSON or URL encoded data"

Additional data to include in the payload. It is optional. This data will attempted to be merged 'as-is' with the existing payload, and is expected to already be sanitized and valid.

In the case of JSON, the custom data will be available on a property named data, and it will be run through a JSON validator. Invalid JSON will cause the action to break and exit. For example, using single quotes for JSON properties and values instead of double quotes, will show the following (somewhat confusing) message in your workflow output: Invalid numeric literal. Such messages are the direct output from the validation library https://stedolan.github.io/jq/. The supplied JSON must pass the validation run through jq.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.