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Commit and push changes to the current branch from a GitHub Action

In specific scenarios, such as when a GitHub Action modifies local files (e.g., a JSON database), you may want to commit and push these changes to the repository.

In my case, I run a scraper weekly in Octagon API project, where I update several local JSON’s files from a GitHub action workflow.

If you only need to run this workflow from a specific branch, you can simply use your branch name as a string, as shown in this example:

name: Push local changes


on:
  workflow_dispatch:


jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-22.04
    name: Push changes
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 1
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
      - uses: pnpm/action-setup@v4
        with:
          version: 8
          run_install: true
      - run: |
          pnpm run your-package-script
          git config user.name my-bot-name
          git add -A
          git commit -am "[BOT] Your message"
          git push origin main

However, if you need to run this workflow from different branches, you can use the context data github.ref_name to get the current branch name.

name: Push local changes


on:
  workflow_dispatch:


jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-22.04
    name: Push changes
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 1
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
      - uses: pnpm/action-setup@v4
        with:
          version: 8
          run_install: true
      - run: |
          pnpm run your-package-script
          git config user.name my-bot-name
          git add -A
          git commit -am "[BOT] Your message"
          git push origin ${{ github.ref_name }}

I hope you found this article useful.

Happy coding! 🚀

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