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Writing multiline if conditions for steps in GitHub Actions

Published on May 5, 2023

You might end up with a really long if condition for your GitHub Action's step, like so:

1  - name: Example
2    if: ${{ github.ref == 'refs/heads/custom' && steps.Build.outcome == 'success' && steps.RetrieveBuildCache.outcome == 'success' && steps.RestoreCache.outputs.cache-hit }}
3    run: echo "Hello world"

As it turns out, it's not so straightforward to break that condition into multiple lines. I kept running into weird "invalid syntax" errors while trying to format the code. Eventually, by trial-and-error, I figured out that the trick is to vertically align all conditions to the first one, like this:

1  - name: Example
2    if: ${{
3      github.ref == 'refs/heads/custom' &&
4      steps.Build.outcome == 'success' &&
5      steps.RetrieveBuildCache.outcome == 'success' &&
6      steps.RestoreCache.outputs.cache-hit
7    }}
8    run: echo "Hello world"

Or this:

1  - name: Example
2    if: ${{ github.ref == 'refs/heads/custom' &&
3            steps.Build.outcome == 'success' &&
4            steps.RetrieveBuildCache.outcome == 'success' &&
5            steps.RestoreCache.outputs.cache-hit }}
6    run: echo "Hello world"

As showcased above, you also need to either

• Vertically align the closing $}} token to the opening ${{ token, or
• Put the $}} token at the end of the last condition's line