Removing a label when a card is added to a project board column

Introduction

This tutorial demonstrates how to use the actions/github-script action along with a conditional to remove a label from issues and pull requests that are added to a specific column on a project board. For example, you can remove the needs review label when project cards are moved into the Done column.

In the tutorial, you will first make a workflow file that uses the actions/github-script action. Then, you will customize the workflow to suit your needs.

Creating the workflow

1. Choose a repository where you want to apply this project management workflow. You can use an existing repository that you have write access to, or you can create a new repository. For more information about creating a repository, see "Creating a new repository."

2. Choose a project board that belongs to the repository. This workflow cannot be used with projects that belong to users or organizations. You can use an existing project board, or you can create a new project board. For more information about creating a project, see "Creating a project board."

3. In your repository, create a file called .github/workflows/YOUR_WORKFLOW.yml, replacing YOUR_WORKFLOW with a name of your choice. This is a workflow file. For more information about creating new files on GitHub, see "Creating new files."

4. Copy the following YAML contents into your workflow file.

   YAML

   name: Remove a label
   on:
     project_card:
       types:
         - moved
   jobs:
     remove_label:
       if: github.event.project_card.column_id == '12345678'
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       permissions:
         issues: write
         pull-requests: write
       steps:
         - uses: actions/github-script@v6
           with:
             script: |
               // this gets the number at the end of the content URL, which should be the issue/PR number
               const issue_num = context.payload.project_card.content_url.split('/').pop()
               github.rest.issues.removeLabel({
                 issue_number: issue_num,
                 owner: context.repo.owner,
                 repo: context.repo.repo,
                 name: ["needs review"]
               })
   

5. Customize the parameters in your workflow file:

   • In github.event.project_card.column_id == '12345678', replace 12345678 with the ID of the column where you want to un-label issues and pull requests that are moved there.

     To find the column ID, navigate to your project board. Next to the title of the column, click then click Copy column link. The column ID is the number at the end of the copied link. For example, 24687531 is the column ID for https://github.com/octocat/octo-repo/projects/1#column-24687531.

     If you want to act on more than one column, separate the conditions with ||. For example, if github.event.project_card.column_id == '12345678' || github.event.project_card.column_id == '87654321' will act whenever a project card is added to column 12345678 or column 87654321. The columns may be on different project boards.

   • Change the value for name in the github.rest.issues.removeLabel() function to the name of the label that you want to remove from issues or pull requests that are moved to the specified column(s). For more information on labels, see "Managing labels."

6. Commit your workflow file to the default branch of your repository. For more information, see "Creating new files."

Testing the workflow

Every time a project card on a project board in your repository moves, this workflow will run. If the card is an issue or a pull request and is moved into the column that you specified, then the workflow will remove the specified label from the issue or a pull request. Cards that are notes will not be affected.

Test your workflow out by moving an issue on your project board into the target column.

1. Open an issue in your repository. For more information, see "Creating an issue."
2. Label the issue with the label that you want the workflow to remove. For more information, see "Managing labels."
3. Add the issue to the project board column that you specified in your workflow file. For more information, see "Adding issues and pull requests to a project board."
4. To see the workflow run that was triggered by adding the issue to the project, view the history of your workflow runs. For more information, see "Viewing workflow run history."
5. When the workflow completes, the issue that you added to the project column should have the specified label removed.

Next steps

• To learn more about additional things you can do with the actions/github-script action, see the actions/github-script action documentation.
• Search GitHub for examples of workflows using this action.