Discord Webhook Action

This action allows users to set up a GitHub Action that calls Discord webhooks with content message and, optionally, a custom username and avatar url.

Recent Updates

• Support for embeds (v4.0.0)
• Support for file uploads (v3.0.0)
• Improved performance by reducing build times by 66% (v3.0.1)

Inputs

Name	Required	Description
webhook-url	true	Webhook URL from discord. See: the intro to webhook docs for details
content	false	Message that is sent via the webhook.
username	false	The username that should appear to send the message. Note: username will have the "bot" badge next to their name.
avatar-url	false	URL for the avatar that should appear with the message.
tts	false	Whether the message is text-to-speech
raw-data	false	Filename of raw JSON body to send. If this is provided, all other inputs (except webhook-url) are ignored.
filename	false	Filename of file to upload. This input is overridden by raw-data. If this is provided, username and avatar-url are still honored.
embed-title	false	Title for embed.
embed-description	false	Description for embed.
embed-timestamp	false	Timestamp for embed (ISO8601 format).
embed-color	false	Color for embed (integer).
embed-footer-text	false	Text content for embed footer.
embed-footer-icon-url	false	Icon URL for embed footer.
embed-image-url	false	Embed image URL.
embed-thumbnail-url	false	Embed Thumbnail URL
embed-author-name	false	Embed Author Name
embed-author-url	false	Embed Author URL
embed-author-icon-url	false	Embed Author Icon URL

Usage

Secrets

PSA: Do not commit your webhook URL to a public repository. Webhooks do not require authentication, so anyone who has the webhook can use it. GitHub repositories support secrets (under settings->secrets). Encrypt your webhook URLs.

Scheduling

GitHub Actions allow users to set up various triggers. One of the triggers is schedule. This allows users to set a POSIX cron timer to run the action.

Below is an example that sends the message "Test" to the provided webhook.

on:
  schedule:
    - cron:  '0 12 * * *'

jobs:
  message:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Discord Webhook Action
      uses: tsickert/[email protected]
      with:
        webhook-url: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_URL }}
        content: "Test"

Disclaimer: GitHub Actions don't seem to always respect the cron job precisely. My experience has been that crons run about 15 minutes after they're scheduled to and crons that should run per minute will likely only run once every 7-10 minutes.

Manual Trigger

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  message:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Discord Webhook Action
      uses: tsickert/[email protected]
      with:
        webhook-url: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_URL }}
        content: "Test"

Note

Multiple triggers are allowed for actions, so the action can have a manual trigger and a cron trigger:

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron:  '0 12 * * *'

Advanced Use Cases

Sending Raw JSON

Do you need to send more than just some basic content? Things like embeds, for example? That's supported in v2.0.0 and above.

Instead of providing content inputs, you can override the raw-data input with the path to a JSON file in your repository that contains your webhook message.

(Note that all inputs except for webhook-url are ignored when raw-data is provided)

Example

Let's say we want to send a message with an embed.

Add a JSON file to your repository with the content you want (for this example, this file is called hi.json).

{
  "content": "See greeting below",
  "embeds": [{"title":"Hello","description":"World"}]
}

IMPORTANT: Then, in the yaml where you define this action, you need to do one very important step, and that's adding a step to pull in the files from your repository.

  - uses: actions/checkout@v2

This will allow the action to read the JSON that we added to the repository.

The final action will look something like this:

name: Hi

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Discord Webhook Action
        uses: tsickert/[email protected]
        with:
          webhook-url: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_URL }}
          raw-data: hi.json

Uploading Files

Do you need to upload a file? Maybe you have a build artifact that you want to share or a daily update on progress that's tracked in a file. That's supported in v3.0.0 and above.

Instead of providing content inputs, you can override the filename input with the path to file in your workspace.

(Note that all inputs except for webhook-url are ignored when raw-data is provided) (Note raw-data overrides this input if it also provided)

Example

Let's say we want upload a file.

Add file to your repository or workspace via an action (for this example, this file is called test.txt).

IMPORTANT: If you added the file to your respoitory, don't forget to pull in the files from your repository.

  - uses: actions/checkout@v2

This will allow the action see any files from the repository in the workspace.

The final action will look something like this:

name: Hi

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Discord Webhook Action
        uses: tsickert/[email protected]
        with:
          webhook-url: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_URL }}
          filename: test.txt

FAQ

Q: Can I use @ pings with this? They just show up as plain text.

A: Yes! Plaintext discord messages use the following syntax for @s: <@{user-id}> for users (example: <@123456790>) and <#{channel-id}> for channels (example: <#123456790>). The easiest way to find your user ID or channel ID is to enable developer mode and then right click on a user or channel and select Copy ID. To enable developer mode, go to settings(cog wheel) -> Advanced (under App Settings header) -> Developer Mode.

Q: Help, something is wrong, my webhook isn't sending!

A: Sorry to hear that! The discord webhook API is complicated and has a long list of conditions and restrictions. The implementation of the webhook provides a few guard rails against misuse, but does not protect against them all. Restrictions are set by Discord and may change--therefore the Discord API should ultimately be the source of truth for those restrictions. If you run into issues, please be sure to check the action outputs. The payload is printed there, so feel free to use it with curl or postman to first validate that the issue is not with the payload. If it's not, please open an issue in this repository and I'll take a look!

Q: What does "Near-full" support of the webhook API mean?

A: The Discord API supports up to 10 embeds per webhook and also offers additional fields in the embed. Due to the input format for actions, I decided to limit it to one embed and I decided not to support fields. (fields seem to be bold text above non-bold text, so they seem reproducable without the explicit field). If you need to have multiple embeds, I would suggest invoking the action multiple times. If requested, I can explore providing the additional embeds and fields, but based on feedback I was getting during dev, the fields provided currently suited most needs.