How to view inputs for an action using github-cli while the action is running?

Question

Is there a way to use the github-cli or api to view the inputs of an action while it is running?

---

I want to allow Github actions to run concurrently. The resources they will manage are determined by the input stack_name. I want to make sure two pipelines cannot run at the same time with the same stack_name input. If this happens, then I want one of the pipeline actions to fail and stop immediately.

I am also taking the input and turning it into an environmental variable for one of my jobs. After the job finishes, the values are available in the logs and I can grep through the following output to get a pipelines stack_name:

$ gh run view $running_pipeline_id --repo=$GITHUB_SERVER_URL/$GITHUB_REPOSITORY --log
....
env-check   env-check   2022-03-22T17:06:30.2615395Z   STACK_NAME: foo

However, this is not available while a job is running and I instead get this error:

run 1234567890 is still in progress; logs will be available when it is complete

---

Here is my current attempt at a code block that can achieve this. I could also use suggestions on how to make better gh run list and/or gh run view calls that can avoid using grep and awk. Clean json output I can parse with jq is preferable.

  set +e
  running_pipeline_ids=$(gh run list --workflow=$SLEEVE --repo=$GITHUB_SERVER_URL/$GITHUB_REPOSITORY \
    | grep 'in_progress' \
    | awk '{print $((NF-2))}' \
    | grep -v $GITHUB_RUN_ID)
  set -e
  for running_pipeline_id in $running_pipeline_ids; do
    # get the stack name for all other running pipelines
    running_pipeline_stack_name=$(gh run view $running_pipeline_id --repo=$GITHUB_SERVER_URL/$GITHUB_REPOSITORY --log \
      | grep 'STACK_NAME:' | head -n 1 \
      | awk -F "STACK_NAME:" '{print $2}' | awk '{print $1}')
    # fail if we detect another pipeline running against the same stack
    if [ "$running_pipeline_stack_name" == "$STACK_NAME" ]; then
      echo "ERROR: concurrent pipeline detected. $GITHUB_SERVER_URL/$GITHUB_REPOSITORY/actions/runs/$running_pipeline_id"
      echo "Please try again after the running pipeline has completed."
      exit 1
    fi
  done

Answer 1

Perhaps you could use the concurrency feature of GitHub Actions?

Now you cannot directly bake this into an action, but if it's possible for you to extract your action into a reusable workflow then you could make use of the concurrency feature.

It would look something like this:

# ./github/workflows/partial.yaml
on:
  workflow_call:
    inputs:
      stack-name:
        description: "name of the stack"
        required: true
        type: string

jobs:
  greet:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    concurrency:
      group: ${{ inputs.stack-name }}
      cancel-in-progress: true
    steps:
      - uses: my/other-action
        with:
          stack_name: ${{ inputs.stack-name }}

And then where you're using it:

jobs:
  test:
    uses: my/app-repo/.github/workflows/partial.yml@main
    with:
      stack-name: 'my-stack'