Add option 'label_patterns' to triggering section to only trigger workflows if a pull request has a specific label

[nilsreichardt]

Use case

I'm using the codemagic_app_preview CLI to post app preview builds for the pull requests. However, if you don't have the unlimited plan, you might want to only trigger the workflow on pull requests with a specific label to avoid unnecessary builds. For that, it would be great to only trigger the workflow if the pull request has a specific label.

Idea

Idea:

This is how it could like in the codemagic.yaml:

workflows:
  app_preview:
    name: app_preview
    triggering:
      label_patterns:
        - pattern: 'build-app-preview'
          include: true
    scripts:
      ...
    artifacts:
      - build/**/outputs/apk/**/*.apk
      - build/ios/ipa/*.ipa
    publishing:
      scripts:
        - name: Post App Preview
          script: |
            dart pub global activate codemagic_app_preview
            app_preview post \
             --github_token $GITHUB_PAT \
             --codemagic_token $CODEMAGIC_TOKEN

Current workaround:

The current workaround is to create a GitHub Action that triggers the Codemagic build with the Codemagic Build API:

name: App Preview

on:
  pull_request:
    types:
      - labeled
      - synchronize

jobs:
  label_app_preview:
    # Only run this job if the PR is labeled with "build-app-preview".
    #
    # Keep in mind that a new build will be triggered when the PR is labeled
    # with any lable as long as the label "build-app-preview" is included in the
    # list of labels. For example, if the PR is labeled with "build-app-preview"
    # and "bug", the job will be triggered when the label "bug" is removed.
    if: contains(github.event.pull_request.labels.*.name, 'build-app-preview')
    runs-on: ubuntu-22.04
    env:
      CODEMAGIC_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.CODEMAGIC_TOKEN }}
      CODEMAGIC_APP_ID: ${{ secrets.CODEMAGIC_APP_ID }}
      # From "codemagic.yaml"
      CODEMAGIC_WORKFLOW_ID: "app-preview"
    steps:
      - name: Start Codemagic Build
        run: |
          curl --request POST 'https://api.codemagic.io/builds' \
            -f \
            --header 'x-auth-token: '"$CODEMAGIC_TOKEN" \
            --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
            --data-raw "{
                \"appId\": \"$CODEMAGIC_APP_ID\",
                \"branch\": \"$GITHUB_HEAD_REF\",
                \"workflowId\": \"$CODEMAGIC_WORKFLOW_ID\"
            }"

Disclaimer:

This is a low-priority feature request and there is an easy workaround for that. However, I'm creating this request to collect upvote to track if other customers have the same request and what use cases other customers have. If there is a certain demand for that, we could first add good docs for that.

If you are a Codemagic customer and you have another use case for this feature, please let us know in the comments.

[Ycoi]

Hi @nilsreichardt! Thanks for the feedback, actually you should already be able to do this using the when conditions as described in our docs. There are some examples there which use pull request labels as conditions.

[nilsreichardt]

Hi @Ycoi, thanks for suggestion. However, using condition is not an option for my use case because the workflow is not triggered if you assign a label after creation of the pull request.

Here an example with the label build-app-preview:

1. I open a pull request without any labels --> Codemagic skips this build because the label build-app-preview is not assigned.
2. I assign the label build-app-preview --> Codemagic does nothing, but for my use it should trigger here
3. Only when commenting a new build is triggered --> Codemagic checks the condition

[mikhail-tokarev]

Hey @nilsreichardt
sorry for the radio silence. Looks like low hanging fruit to add labeled action for GitHub webhooks. In this case you don't need GitHub Actions and everything will work using condition rules. We will keep you in the loop

[mohammedbabelly20]

Hey @nilsreichardt,
Now Codemagic can handle the labeled action received from GitHub when you add a new label to your PR.

That being said, you can now get rid of the GitHub action to trigger a Codemagic build and just add a condition to your triggering section as described here to check the PR labels.

[mohammedbabelly20]

UPDATE: We now have a new triggering event called pull_request_labeled which triggers builds when adding a new label to a GitHub PR.

By default, if you have this event, it will start builds for every label you add, unless you limit it by a condition like this:

triggering:
  events:
    - pull_request_labeled
when:
  condition: event.pull_request.labels[0].name == "label"