Events (Triggers)

The 'on' block is your scheduler

Every workflow declares its triggers under on:. The most common triggers, in roughly the order you'll use them:

push — fires on every push. Filterable by branches, tags, paths.
pull_request — fires on PR open, sync (new commit), reopen, etc. Filterable by branches, paths, types.
schedule — cron-like, in UTC. '0 6 * * *' = 06:00 UTC daily.
workflow_dispatch — manual trigger from UI / API / CLI. Inputs are first-class.
release — fires on release events (created, published, edited).
workflow_call — makes this workflow callable from another (reusable workflow).
repository_dispatch — external system POSTs to fire it.
merge_group — fires inside a merge queue.

Filters narrow the trigger

You almost never want bare on: push. You want push to main or push that changed source files. Filters live under each event:

branches / branches-ignore
tags / tags-ignore
paths / paths-ignore — glob patterns matched against changed files.
types — for events with sub-types (PR opened/synchronized/reopened).

Code

Mixed triggers with filters·yaml

name: ci
on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, ready_for_review]
    paths:
      - 'src/**'
      - 'tests/**'
      - '.github/workflows/ci.yml'
  push:
    branches: [main]
    tags: ['v*.*.*']
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 6 * * *'   # 06:00 UTC daily
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      reason:
        description: 'Why are you running this?'
        required: true

The 'on' block is your scheduler

Filters narrow the trigger

Code

External links

Exercise

Progress

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