Github Actions: Search For String

2 minute read

Description:

So I wanted a way that when I did a push to my Github repo, it would scan all my files for a particular phrase and fail the job if it found it. This is because I have two repos - one prod and one test, but each uses different servers on-prem for REST API calls and such. Well sometimes when I copy/paste between TEST/PROD, I will accidentally copy those server names and forget to switch them.

Using Github Actions, I could get a ‘failed’ notification on push if it finds these server names - perfect! So first, I tried to setup this action with 18 stars, but when I tried it - it didn’t do anything. No error, but the string I wanted it to replace was still there. Here is what ended up working:

To Resolve:

  1. Locally, in vscode, I created .github/workflows/ps-check.yml in my repo with the following:

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    name: ps-check-workflow
on: [push, pull_request]
jobs:
build:
   runs-on: ubuntu-latest
   steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
         
      - name: PS-Check
      uses: SleepySysadmin/github-action-pscheck@v0.4.2
    • This is not related to the original issue, but what it does is run PSScriptAnalyzer on every push so my push should fail if I have invalid code.

  2. Created .github/workflows/run-script.yml in my repo with the following:

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    name: run-script-workflow
on: [push, pull_request]
jobs:
build:
   runs-on: ubuntu-latest
   steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Check for prod server names
      run: |
         chmod +x ./.github/scripts/run-check.sh;
         ./.github/scripts/run-check.sh
      env: 
         MYVAR: something-unique
      shell: bash
    • This is the action that will call my bash script in the next steps

  3. Created .github/scripts/run-check.sh in my repo with the following:

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    #echo "MYVAR: $MYVAR"

search=$(grep -r 'prodServer' ./runbooks/*.ps1)

if [[ -z "$search" ]]
then
   :
else
   MYVAR='not-unique'
fi

searchSN=$(grep -r 'prodServer2.domain.com' ./runbooks/*.ps1)
if [[ -z "$searchSN" ]]
then
   :
else
   MYVAR='not-unique'
fi


if [ $MYVAR == "something-unique" ]
then
   exit 0
else
   echo $search
   echo $searchSN
   exit 1
fi
    • Ran locally before pushing: git update-index --chmod=+x ./.github/scripts/run-check.sh

  4. With those files created and chmod command ran, do a push to your repo. Now in Github, go the Actions tab in your repo and you should see two actions running - ps-check-workflow and run-script-workflow. Congrats!

  5. Optionally, in my README.md at the repo root, I entered ![ps-check-workflow](https://github.com/myuser/myrepo/workflows/ps-check-workflow/badge.svg) at the top of my file and pushed again and got the cool badge notifications that will say passing or failed. See here for more info.

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