Fetch Metadata Action

Name: dependabot/fetch-metadata

Extract information about the dependencies being updated by a Dependabot-generated PR.

Usage instructions

Create a workflow file that contains a step that uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@v2, e.g.

# .github/workflows/dependabot-prs.yml
name: Dependabot Pull Request
on: pull_request
jobs:
  dependabot:
    permissions:
      pull-requests: read
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.event.pull_request.user.login == 'dependabot[bot]' && github.repository == 'owner/my_repo'
    steps:
    - name: Fetch Dependabot metadata
      id: dependabot-metadata
      uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@v2
      with:
        alert-lookup: true
        compat-lookup: true
        github-token: "${{ secrets.PAT_TOKEN }}"

Supported inputs are:

• github-token (string)
• The GITHUB_TOKEN secret
• Defaults to ${{ github.token }}
• Note: this must be set to a personal access token (PAT) or an installation access token (App Token) if you enable alert-lookup or compat-lookup.
• alert-lookup (boolean)
• If true, then populate the alert-state, ghsa-id and cvss outputs.
• Defaults to false
• Note: the github-token field must be set to a personal access token (PAT) or an installation access token (App Token). For more details, see this
• compat-lookup (boolean)
• If true, then populate the compatibility-score output.
• Defaults to false
• Note: the github-token field must be set to a personal access token (PAT).
• skip-commit-verification (boolean)
• If true, then the action will not expect the commits to have a verification signature. It is required to set this to 'true' in GitHub Enterprise Server
• Defaults to false
• skip-verification (boolean)
  • If true, the action will not validate the user or the commit verification status
  • Defaults to false

Subsequent actions will have access to the following outputs:

• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.dependency-names
• A comma-separated list of the package names updated by the PR.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.dependency-type
• The type of dependency has determined this PR to be. Possible values are: direct:production, direct:development and indirect. See the allow documentation for descriptions of each.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.update-type
• The highest semver change being made by this PR, e.g. version-update:semver-major. For all possible values, see the ignore documentation.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.updated-dependencies-json
• A JSON string containing the full information about each updated Dependency.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.directory
• The directory configuration that was used by dependabot for this updated Dependency.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.package-ecosystem
• The package-ecosystem configuration that was used by dependabot for this updated Dependency.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.target-branch
• The target-branch configuration that was used by dependabot for this updated Dependency.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.previous-version
• The version that this PR updates the dependency from.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.new-version
• The version that this PR updates the dependency to.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.alert-state
• If this PR is associated with a security alert and alert-lookup is true, this contains the current state of that alert (OPEN, FIXED or DISMISSED).
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.ghsa-id
• If this PR is associated with a security alert and alert-lookup is true, this contains the GHSA-ID of that alert.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.cvss
• If this PR is associated with a security alert and alert-lookup is true, this contains the CVSS value of that alert (otherwise it contains 0).
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.compatibility-score
• If this PR has a known compatibility score and compat-lookup is true, this contains the compatibility score (otherwise it contains 0).
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.maintainer-changes
• Whether or not the the body of this PR contains the phrase "Maintainer changes" which is an indicator of whether or not any maintainers have changed.
• steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.dependency-group
• The dependency group that the PR is associated with (otherwise it is an empty string).

Note: By default, these outputs will only be populated if the target Pull Request was opened by Dependabot and contains only Dependabot-created commits. To override, see skip-commit-verification / skip-verification.

This metadata can be used along with Action's expression syntax and the GitHub CLI to create useful automation for your Dependabot PRs.

[!NOTE] Workflows triggered by Dependabot on the pull_request event run with a read-only GITHUB_TOKEN and cannot access user-defined repository or organization secrets. The GitHub-provided token is still available, but only with read-only permissions (prefer github.token when referring to that built-in token in examples). If your workflow needs write permissions or access to user-defined secrets, use the pull_request_target event or a separate workflow triggered by workflow_run. The examples below use pull_request_target for this reason.

Auto-approving

Since the dependabot/fetch-metadata Action will set a failure code if it cannot find any metadata, you can have a permissive auto-approval on all Dependabot PRs like so:

[!NOTE] The GITHUB_TOKEN approval will come from the github-actions[bot] user. If your branch protection rules use "Require approval of the most recent reviewable push" or restrict which users/teams can provide approving reviews, this approval may not satisfy your merge requirements. In those cases, consider using a PAT or GitHub App token instead, but store that credential as a secret, grant it the least privilege needed, and do not expose it to untrusted or PR-controlled code paths. This is especially important for workflows triggered by pull_request_target: do not make such secrets available to steps that run code from the pull request.

name: Dependabot auto-approve
on: pull_request_target
permissions:
  pull-requests: write
jobs:
  dependabot:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    # Checking the author will prevent your Action run failing on non-Dependabot PRs
    if: github.event.pull_request.user.login == 'dependabot[bot]' && github.repository == 'owner/my_repo'
    steps:
      - name: Dependabot metadata
        id: dependabot-metadata
        uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@v2
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Approve a PR if not already approved
        run: |
          gh pr checkout "$PR_URL" # sets the upstream metadata for `gh pr status`
          if [ "$(gh pr status --json reviewDecision -q .currentBranch.reviewDecision)" != "APPROVED" ];
          then gh pr review --approve "$PR_URL"
          else echo "PR already approved, skipping additional approvals to minimize emails/notification noise.";
          fi
        env:
          PR_URL: ${{github.event.pull_request.html_url}}
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}

Enabling auto-merge

If you are using the auto-merge feature on your repository, you can set up an action that will enable Dependabot PRs to merge once CI and other branch protection rules are met. Enabling auto-merge requires write permissions on the repository. When using pull_request_target, the GITHUB_TOKEN has read/write access and satisfies this requirement when configured with contents: write and pull-requests: write.

For example, if you want to automatically merge all patch updates to Rails:

name: Dependabot auto-merge
on: pull_request_target
permissions:
  pull-requests: write
  contents: write
jobs:
  dependabot:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.event.pull_request.user.login == 'dependabot[bot]' && github.repository == 'owner/my_repo'
    steps:
      - name: Dependabot metadata
        id: dependabot-metadata
        uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@v2
      - name: Enable auto-merge for Dependabot PRs
        if: ${{contains(steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.dependency-names, 'rails') && steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.update-type == 'version-update:semver-patch'}}
        run: gh pr merge --auto --merge "${{github.event.pull_request.html_url}}"
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}

Labelling

If you have other automation or triage workflows based on GitHub labels, you can configure an action to assign these based on the metadata.

For example, if you want to flag all production dependency updates with a label:

name: Dependabot auto-label
on: pull_request_target
permissions:
  pull-requests: write
  issues: write
  repository-projects: write
jobs:
  dependabot:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.event.pull_request.user.login == 'dependabot[bot]' && github.repository == 'owner/my_repo'
    steps:
      - name: Dependabot metadata
        id: dependabot-metadata
        uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@v2
      - name: Add a label for all production dependencies
        if: ${{ steps.dependabot-metadata.outputs.dependency-type == 'direct:production' }}
        run: gh pr edit "${{github.event.pull_request.html_url}}" --add-label "production"
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}

Use with App Token

First, create a GitHub App and set the appropriate permissions.

For example, to use the features below, the minimum permissions required for the GitHub App are as follows:

• alert-lookup : Dependabot alerts: Read only

Please add any necessary permissions for your job as needed.

The following is an example of using an installation access token (App Token) in github-token.

```yml on: pull_request jobs: dependabot: runs-on: ubuntu-latest if: github.event.pull_request.user.login == 'dependabot[bot]' && github.repository == 'owner/my_repo' steps: - uses: actions/create-github-app-token@v2 id: app-token with: # Store these as repository or organization GitHub Dependabot secrets # (e.g. Settings → Secrets and variables → Dependabot → GH_APP_ID, GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY) app-id: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_ID }} # GitHub App ID private-key: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY }} # GitHub App Private key

  - name: Dependabot metadata
    id: dependabot-metadata
    uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@v2
    wi