how to run a node.js github repository as a service in another repository on github actions

Question

So I have a project that needs a "fake" API to do some functional testing on user scenarios; so my idea was creating a simple little node.js project and getting to return some dummy json data depending on a few endpoints to test several use cases of my application.

I have a separate repository containing this fake API and I'm wondering how I should go about adding it into my github actions workflow?

Answer 1

You can use actions/checkout@v2 to pull another repo into your worker.

See the example below:

name: PullExternalRepo

on: workflow_dispatch

jobs:
  PullRepo:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      - name: Install Node
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2-beta
        with:
          node-version: '12'
      - name: Install external repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          repository: your_org/repo_name
          path: './place/to/clone/repo/into'
      - name: Install deps and run
        run: |
          cd ./place/to/clone/repo/into
          npm install
          npm start

Added note about pulling specific branches:

If you are trying to pull a non-default branch, you need to add the ref property to the checkout action, as seen in the example below.

...
      - name: Install external repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          repository: your_org/repo_name
          path: './place/to/clone/repo/into'
          ref: 'some-other-branch'
...