Add way to define a long string workflow_dispatch input

[gabimoncha]

I'm trying to add new lines to the string input but the input box is unusable.

It would be nice to also add the option of input or textarea where the user can increase the height of the box and pressing Enter would add a new line in the field

[ethomson]

This is good feedback @gabrielmoncea - I'll talk with the team about it and make sure that it is on the backlog.

[Angelk90]

@ethomson : Is there any news?

[bahanurenis-tomtom]

I am also experiencing same problem is there any update yet?

[dinhnhat0401]

any updates on this?

[nhhai]

+1
Our use case is to add changes log / release notes into manual workflows.

[liviudobrea]

Same, would be nice to have

[M07amedRamadan]

same issue

[nhhai]

Currently, our workaround is to send \n as the newline character, and then use echo to paste it to file.
This is a step in the workflow:

    run: |
          rm -rf artifacts
          mkdir artifacts

          echo -e "$CHANGES_LOG" >> artifacts/changes_log.txt
          echo -e "$INTERNAL_NOTES" >> artifacts/internal_notes.txt

          echo "Changes log:"
          cat artifacts/changes_log.txt
          echo ""

          echo "Internal notes:"
          cat artifacts/internal_notes.txt
          echo ""

You can use your text editor to prepare the notes, then replace the newline character with \n to paste into the workflow.

[kr185198]

Hello @ethomson. We are having a use case that requires a multiline string as input. Any updates on this ?

[archon810]

Would love an update here as well. We're looking to add a changelog field on the fly for workflow runs and a single-line string is not good enough for that.

[jkester1986]

any update on this? It would be incredibly helpful

[dawilliams-gpsw]

+1 here as well. We have a similar need for multi line release notes/comments

[smesh]

+1. Example: sql script.

[Meenu-Chandrasekaran]

+1

[zevnda]

+1 the main reason I'm not using workflows for creating my releases is the lack of a multi-line textarea. It makes adding changelogs/release notes an annoyance. Sure, formatting a single line string of text is managable, but it is an unnecessary step, so I may as well manually create them myself

[nebuk89]

Sorry for Actions Product being quiet here, I will add this to our papercuts backlog that we are working against over the next 12 months. I cannot commit we will get to it :) but know that we are still aware (it has not been forgotten).

[AriPerkkio]

As work-around, you can change the element type with developer tools and paste multiline string just fine. It's usable in actions as is.

- <input
+ <textarea
   class="form-control
   input-contrast
   input-sm"
   type="text"
   id="input_0"
   required=""
   name="inputs[message]"
   value="">

[dawilliams-gpsw]

That's an excellent workaround @gabimoncha and also shows it should be pretty simple for Github to implement this feature. 🤞🏻

[jkester1986]

That would work....but that's not a great workaround IMO. Another alternative is to take what you want to have in the input, and put it into a string escape tool like https://appdevtools.com/json-escape-unescape. This is what my team is doing. But both of these workarounds are things that have to be done every time the workflow is run.