GitHub Action to extract content from data files. How it works:

• Provide a file path to some data (supports JSON, JSON5, JSONC, YAML and TOML)
• Provide a field to index the data, like version, author.name or keywords[0]
• Read the output with ${{ steps.<step-id>.outputs.result }}

Jump to:

• inputs
• field syntax
• outputs
• examples

Add this action to your workflow by referencing it in your .github/workflows/*.yml file:

- uses: seaofvoices/read-data-field-action@v1
  id: <enter-an-id-to-refer-to>
  with:
    file: package.json
    field: version

The field input uses dot-notation syntax to traverse nested data structures. You can access object properties, array elements.

• use . to index by a property name
• use [<integer>] to index an array. Replace <integer> with a valid 0-based array index, e.g. [0] to index the first element.

Here are a few examples of field paths that can be used. Note that the examples are using JSON data, but these are valid for any supported data format.

Escape special characters using backslashes \.

The action produces 2 output values. Look at the examples to see how to read them.

- name: Read package version
  id: package-info
  uses: seaofvoices/read-data-field-action@v1
  with:
    file: package.json
    field: version

- name: Use the version
  run: echo "Package version is ${{ steps.package-info.outputs.result }}"

- name: Read build script
  id: build-script
  uses: seaofvoices/read-data-field-action@v1
  with:
    file: package.json
    field: scripts.build

- name: Read nested YAML configuration
  id: config
  uses: seaofvoices/read-data-field-action@v1
  with:
    file: config.yaml
    field: database.host

- name: Read Cargo package name
  id: cargo-info
  uses: seaofvoices/read-data-field-action@v1
  with:
    file: Cargo.toml
    field: package.name

The action supports multiple data formats and uses intelligent parsing:

• JSON (.json) - Standard JSON format
• JSON5 (.json5) - JSON5 with comments and trailing commas
• JSONC (.json) - JSON with comments (falls back if standard JSON parsing fails)
• YAML (.yml, .yaml) - YAML format
• TOML (.toml) - TOML format

The parser automatically detects the format based on file extension and tries all available parsers.

This project is available under the MIT license. See LICENSE.txt for details.