How to get pull request number within GitHub Actions workflow

Question

I want to access the Pull Request number in a Github Actions workflow. I can access the GITHUB_REF environment variable that is available. Although on a Pull Request action it has the value: refs/pull/125/merge. I need to extract just the 125.

I have found a similar post here that shows how to get the current branch using this variable. Although in this case, what I am parsing is different and I have been unable to isolate the Pull Request number.

• I have tried using {GITHUB_REF##\*/} which resolves to merge
• I have also tried {GITHUB_REF#\*/} which resolves to pull/125/merge

I only need the Pull Request number (which in my example is 125)

Answer 1

Although it is already answered, the easiest way I found is using the github context. The following example shows how to set it to an environment variable.

env:
  PR_NUMBER: ${{ github.event.number }}

Answer 2

An alternative if you are trying to figure out which PR a commit is linked to on a push instead of a pull_request event is to use the gh CLI which is included in the standard GitHub Action images.

For example:

      - name: Get Pull Request Number
        id: pr
        run: echo "::set-output name=pull_request_number::$(gh pr view --json number -q .number || echo "")"
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Be sure to add pull_request: read permissions on the job as well.

Then in following steps, you can access it with the variable,

${{ steps.pr.outputs.pull_request_number }}

Answer 3

While the answer by @Samira worked correctly. I found out that there is a new way to do this and wanted to share it with anyone who might stumble upon this.

The solution is to add a stage at the beginning of your workflow which gets the PR number from the Github Token (event) and then set it as an environment variable for easy use throughout the rest of the workflow. Here is the code:

  - name: Test
    uses: actions/github-script@0.3.0
    with:
      github-token: ${{github.token}}
      script: |
        const core = require('@actions/core')
        const prNumber = context.payload.number;
        core.exportVariable('PULL_NUMBER', prNumber);

Now in any later stage, you can simply use $PULL_NUMBER to access the environment variable set before.

Answer 4

How about using awk to extract parts of GITHUB_REF instead of bash magick?

From awk manpage:

-F fs

--field-separator fs

Use fs for the input field separator (the value of the FS predefined variable).

As long you remember this, it's trivial to extract only part of variable you need. awk is available on all platforms, so step below will work everywhere:

- run:   echo ::set-env name=PULL_NUMBER::$(echo "$GITHUB_REF" | awk -F / '{print $3}')
  shell: bash

Answer 5

Here's a working snippet to get the issue number in both push and pull_request events within a GitHub Actions workflow by leveraging actions/github-script:

steps:
  - uses: actions/github-script@v6
    id: get_issue_number
    with:
      script: |
        if (context.issue.number) {
          // Return issue number if present
          return context.issue.number;
        } else {
          // Otherwise return issue number from commit
          return (
            await github.rest.repos.listPullRequestsAssociatedWithCommit({
              commit_sha: context.sha,
              owner: context.repo.owner,
              repo: context.repo.repo,
            })
          ).data[0].number;
        }
      result-encoding: string
  - name: Issue number
    run: echo '${{steps.get_issue_number.outputs.result}}'

The script queries the list labels for an issue REST API endpoint via octokit/rest.js client.

Answer 6

In my case my job is trigged by

  pull_request_review:
    types: [submitted]

so using github.event.number doesn't give me the PR number.

The other solutions here are all using the deprecated set-env method which require you to "allow unsecure commands"

I was able to successfully put the PR into my env variables using a more modern method w/ awk (I took that part from Samarai's answer):

      - name: Get Pull Request Number
        run: echo "PULL_NUMBER=$(echo "$GITHUB_REF" | awk -F / '{print $3}')" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        shell: bash

Then using it in other steps is simply: ${{ env.PULL_NUMBER }}

Answer 7

Just gonna drop what worked out for me

      - id: find-pull-request
        uses: jwalton/gh-find-current-pr@v1
        with:
          # Can be "open", "closed", or "all".  Defaults to "open".
          state: open
      - name: create TODO/FIXME comment body
        id: comment-body
        run: |
          yarn leasot '**/*.{js,ts,jsx,tsx}' --ignore 'node_modules/**/*' --exit-nicely --reporter markdown > TODO.md
          body="$(sed 1,2d TODO.md)"
          body="${body//'%'/'%25'}"
          body="${body//$'\n'/'%0A'}"
          body="${body//$'\r'/'%0D'}" 
          echo "::set-output name=body::$body"
      - name: post TODO/FIXME comment to PR
        uses: peter-evans/create-or-update-comment@v2
        with:
          issue-number: ${{ steps.find-pull-request.outputs.number }}
          body: ${{ steps.comment-body.outputs.body }}

Answer 8

For actions that need to run on PRs and on comments on PRs, I ended up extracting it with:

export PR_NUMBER="${{ github.event.pull_request.number || github.event.issue.number }}"

This is because github.event.pull_request.number is only defined for events triggered by a PR opening/closing, while github.event.issue.number is only defined for comments on PRs (the former needs a on: pull_request, the latter needs a on: issue_comment): this method allowed me to recycle the same action across different workflows.