Label Creator Action

• Features
• Configuration
• Inputs
  • Permissions
• Outputs
• Examples
• Tags
• Support
• Contributing

Automatically Create or Update Labels to ensure they exist and are synchronized. Works from a centralized remote configuration file/url, local file or inline config.

This works by fetching the configuration file and current repository labels. It loops through the configuration and checks if the provided labels exist. If the label does not exist, it creates a new label with the name, color and description. If the label exist, it makes sure the color and description matches, otherwise updates them. You can also enable delete which will delete any labels not in the configuration file.

- name: 'Label Creator'
  uses: cssnr/label-creator-action@v1

This is the workflow I use on all my repos: .github/workflows/labeler.yaml
Which checks out these centralized configs: https://github.com/cssnr/configs

Features

• Keep Labels up-to-date on every workflow run.
• Use a centralized configuration local or remote file or inline JSON or YAML.

Configuration

The configuration file can be remote file, local file, or inline JSON or YAML string. In all cases the same format is used.

workflows:
  color: ffffff
  description: Workflows modification
documentation:
  color: 0075ca
  description: Documentation updates
source:
  color: fbca04
  description: Source modification

Both color and description are optional; however, I assume you are using this action because you want to set one of them. If you are using actions/labeler it will create the labels, but not set the description or color.

By default, the file is sourced from .github/labels.yaml but can be placed anywhere.

This includes remote files.
Example URL: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cssnr/label-creator-action/refs/heads/master/.github/labels.yaml

Inputs

All inputs are optional.

Input	Default Value	Description of Input
file	.github/labels.yaml	Configuration file path
url	-	Configuration file URL
data	-	Configuration JSON/YAML string
delete	false	Delete labels not in config
summary	true	Add Summary to Job
dry-run	false	Dry Run, only output results
token	github.token	GitHub Access Token PAT 1

This action is designed to work on the pull_request_target trigger.
Example workflow: .github/workflows/labeler.yaml

- name: 'Label Creator'
  uses: cssnr/label-creator-action@v1

See the Examples for usage options.

Permissions

This action requires the following permissions:

permissions:
  issues: write

Permissions documentation for Workflows and Actions.

Outputs

Output	Description of Output
changed	true if any changes or false
created	Labels Created JSON Array
updated	Labels Updated JSON Array
deleted	Labels Deleted JSON Array

Note: All outputs are Strings per GitHub Spec.

- name: 'Label Creator'
  id: label
  uses: cssnr/label-creator-action@v1

- name: 'Echo Output'
  run: |
    echo "changed: ${{ steps.label.outputs.changed }}"
    echo "created: ${{ steps.label.outputs.created }}"
    echo "updated: ${{ steps.label.outputs.updated }}"
    echo "deleted: ${{ steps.label.outputs.deleted }}"

Examples

💡 Click on an example heading to expand or collapse the example.

With a local file.

- name: 'Label Creator'
  uses: cssnr/label-creator-action@v1
  with:
    file: .github/labels.yaml

With a remote file.

- name: 'Label Creator'
  uses: cssnr/label-creator-action@v1
  with:
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cssnr/label-creator-action/refs/heads/master/.github/labels.yaml

With an inline JSON string.

- name: 'Label Creator'
  uses: cssnr/label-creator-action@v1
  with:
    data: |
      {
        "workflows": {"color": "ffffff", "description": "Workflows modification"},
        "documentation": {"color": "0075ca", "description": "Documentation updates"},
        "source": {"color": "fbca04", "description": "Source modification"}
      }

With an inline YAML + JSON string

- name: 'Label Creator'
  uses: cssnr/label-creator-action@v1
  with:
    data: |
      workflows: {"color": "ffffff", "description": "Workflows modification"}
      source: {"color": "fbca04", "description": "Source modification"}
      documentation: {"color": "0075ca", "description": "Documentation updates"}

With an inline YAML string.

- name: 'Label Creator'
  uses: cssnr/label-creator-action@v1
  with:
    data: |
      workflows:
        color: ffffff
        description: Workflows modification
      source:
        color: fbca04
        description: Source modification
      documentation:
        color: 0075ca
        description: Documentation updates

Full Workflow

This is the workflow I use to pull centralized configuration files from a repository.

name: 'PR Labeler'

on:
  pull_request_target:

permissions:
  issues: write

jobs:
  labeler:
    name: 'Labeler'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    timeout-minutes: 5

    steps:
      - name: 'Checkout Configs'
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          repository: cssnr/configs
          ref: master
          path: .configs
          sparse-checkout-cone-mode: false
          sparse-checkout: |
            labels/**

      - name: 'Debug'
        continue-on-error: true
        run: |
          echo "::group::labels.yaml"
          cat .configs/labels/labels.yaml
          echo "::endgroup::"

          echo "::group::labeler.yaml"
          cat .configs/labels/labeler.yaml
          echo "::endgroup::"

      - name: 'Label Creator'
        continue-on-error: true
        uses: cssnr/label-creator-action@v1
        with:
          file: .configs/labels/labels.yaml

      - name: 'Labeler'
        uses: actions/labeler@v6
        with:
          sync-labels: true
          configuration-path: .configs/labels/labeler.yaml

Note: Steps with continue-on-error: true will fail silently.

For more examples, you can check out other projects using this action:
https://github.com/cssnr/label-creator-action/network/dependents

Tags

The following rolling tags are maintained.

Version Tag	Rolling	Bugs	Feat.	Name	Target	Example
	✅	✅	✅	Major	vN.x.x	vN
	✅	✅	❌	Minor	vN.N.x	vN.N
	❌	❌	❌	Micro	vN.N.N	vN.N.N

You can view the release notes for each version on the releases page.

The Major tag is recommended. It is the most up-to-date and always backwards compatible. Breaking changes would result in a Major version bump. At a minimum you should use a Minor tag.

Support

For general help or to request a feature, see:

• Q&A Discussion: https://github.com/cssnr/label-creator-action/discussions/categories/q-a
• Request a Feature: https://github.com/cssnr/label-creator-action/discussions/categories/feature-requests

If you are experiencing an issue/bug or getting unexpected results, you can:

• Report an Issue: https://github.com/cssnr/label-creator-action/issues
• Chat with us on Discord: https://discord.gg/wXy6m2X8wY
• Provide General Feedback: https://cssnr.github.io/feedback/

For more information, see the CSSNR SUPPORT.md.

Contributing

If you would like to submit a PR, please review the CONTRIBUTING.md.

Please consider making a donation to support the development of this project and additional open source projects.

Additionally, you can support other GitHub Actions I have published:

• Stack Deploy Action
• Portainer Stack Deploy Action
• Docker Context Action
• Actions Up Action
• VirusTotal Action
• Mirror Repository Action
• Update Version Tags Action
• Docker Tags Action
• Update JSON Value Action
• JSON Key Value Check Action
• Parse Issue Form Action
• Cloudflare Purge Cache Action
• Mozilla Addon Update Action
• Package Changelog Action
• NPM Outdated Check Action
• Label Creator Action
• Algolia Crawler Action
• Upload Release Action
• Check Build Action
• Web Request Action
• Get Commit Action

❔ Unpublished Actions

These actions are not published on the Marketplace, but may be useful.

• cssnr/create-files-action - Create various files from templates.
• cssnr/draft-release-action - Keep a draft release ready to publish.
• cssnr/env-json-action - Convert env file to json or vice versa.
• cssnr/push-artifacts-action - Sync files to a remote host with rsync.
• smashedr/update-release-notes-action - Update release notes.
• smashedr/combine-release-notes-action - Combine release notes.

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📝 Template Actions

These are basic action templates that I use for creating new actions.

• js-test-action - JavaScript
• ts-test-action - TypeScript
• py-test-action - Python (Dockerfile)
• docker-test-action - Docker (Image)

Note: The docker-test-action builds, runs and pushes images to GitHub Container Registry.

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For a full list of current projects visit: https://cssnr.github.io/

Footnotes

1. The ${{ github.token }} / {{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} is automatically passed, there is no need to manually pass these! This is only available to allow users to pass a different token they have created and defined in their secrets. ↩