11 KiB
🚨 Update (November 2023)This action uses I am working on a new tool similar to this action but one that reduces false positives and includes the most requested features. I am currently working on developing and testing Linkspector, and I hope to release it soon. In the meantime, I'll support this action in maintenance-only mode as I want to focus more on Linkspector. I appreciate your understanding and patience. If you're interested in Linkspector, follow its progress on its GitHub repository. Thank you for using this action, and I hope you will enjoy Linkspector when it is ready. |
GitHub Action - Markdown link check 🔗✔️
This GitHub action checks all Markdown files in your repository for broken links. (Uses tcort/markdown-link-check)
How to use
-
Create a new file in your repository
.github/workflows/action.yml
. -
Copy-paste the following workflow in your
action.yml
file:name: Check Markdown links on: push jobs: markdown-link-check: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@master - uses: gaurav-nelson/github-action-markdown-link-check@v1
Real-life usage samples
Following is a list of some of the repositories which are using GitHub Action - Markdown link check.
If you are using this on production, consider buying me a coffee ☕.
Configuration
- Custom variables
- Scheduled runs
- Disable check for some links
- Check only modified files in a pull request
- Check multiple directories and files
- Status code 429: Too many requests
- GitHub links failure fix
Custom variables
You customize the action by using the following variables:
Variable | Description | Default value |
---|---|---|
use-quiet-mode |
Specify yes to only show errors in output. |
no |
use-verbose-mode |
Specify yes to show detailed HTTP status for checked links. |
no |
config-file |
Specify a custom configuration file for markdown-link-check. You can use it to remove false-positives by specifying replacement patterns and ignore patterns. The filename is interpreted relative to the repository root. | mlc_config.json |
folder-path |
By default the github-action-markdown-link-check action checks for all markdown files in your repository. Use this option to limit checks to only specific folders. Use comma separated values for checking multiple folders. |
. |
max-depth |
Specify how many levels deep you want to check in the directory structure. The default value is -1 which means check all levels. |
-1 |
check-modified-files-only |
Use this variable to only check modified markdown files instead of checking all markdown files. The action uses git to find modified markdown files. Only use this variable when you run the action to check pull requests. |
no |
base-branch |
Use this variable to specify the branch to compare when finding modified markdown files. | master |
file-extension |
By default the github-action-markdown-link-check action checks files in your repository with the .md extension. Use this option to specify a different file extension such as .markdown or .mdx . |
.md |
file-path |
Specify additional files (with complete path and extension) you want to check. Use comma separated values for checking multiple files. See Check multiple directories and files section for usage. | - |
Sample workflow with variables
name: Check Markdown links
on: push
jobs:
markdown-link-check:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@master
- uses: gaurav-nelson/github-action-markdown-link-check@v1
with:
use-quiet-mode: 'yes'
use-verbose-mode: 'yes'
config-file: 'mlc_config.json'
folder-path: 'docs/markdown_files'
max-depth: 2
Scheduled runs
In addition to checking links on every push, or pull requests, its also a good hygiene to check for broken links regularly as well. See Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions - on.schedule for more details.
Sample workflow with scheduled job
name: Check Markdown links
on:
push:
branches:
- master
schedule:
# Run everyday at 9:00 AM (See https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/crontab.html#tag_20_25_07)
- cron: "0 9 * * *"
jobs:
markdown-link-check:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@master
- uses: gaurav-nelson/github-action-markdown-link-check@v1
with:
use-quiet-mode: 'yes'
use-verbose-mode: 'yes'
config-file: 'mlc_config.json'
folder-path: 'docs/markdown_files'
Disable check for some links
You can include the following HTML comments into your markdown files to disable checking for certain links in a markdown document.
<!-- markdown-link-check-disable -->
and<!-- markdown-link-check-enable-->
: Use these to disable links for all links appearing between these comments.- Example:
<!-- markdown-link-check-disable --> ## Section Disbale link checking in this section. Ignore this [Bad Link](https://exampleexample.cox) <!-- markdown-link-check-enable -->
- Example:
<!-- markdown-link-check-disable-next-line -->
Use this comment to disable link checking for the next line.<!-- markdown-link-check-disable-line -->
Use this comment to disable link checking for the current line.
Check only modified files in a pull request
Use the following workflow to only check links in modified markdown files in a pull request.
When you use this variable, the action finds modified files between two commits:
- latest commit in you PR
- latest commit in the
master
branch. If you are suing a different branch to merge PRs, specify the branch usingbase-branch
.
Note
: We can also use GitHub API to get all modified files in a PR, but that would require tokens and stuff, create an issue or PR if you need that.
on: [pull_request]
name: Check links for modified files
jobs:
markdown-link-check:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@master
- uses: gaurav-nelson/github-action-markdown-link-check@v1
with:
use-quiet-mode: 'yes'
use-verbose-mode: 'yes'
check-modified-files-only: 'yes'
Check multiple directories and files
on: [pull_request]
name: Check links for modified files
jobs:
markdown-link-check:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@master
- uses: gaurav-nelson/github-action-markdown-link-check@v1
with:
use-quiet-mode: 'yes'
folder-path: 'md/dir1, md/dir2'
file-path: './README.md, ./LICENSE, ./md/file4.markdown'
Too many requests
Use retryOn429
, retry-after
, retryCount
, and fallbackRetryDelay
in your custom configuration file.
See https://github.com/tcort/markdown-link-check#config-file-format for details.
Or mark 429 status code as alive:
{
"aliveStatusCodes": [429, 200]
}
GitHub links failure fix
Use the following httpHeaders
in your custom configuration file to fix GitHub links failure.
{
"httpHeaders": [
{
"urls": ["https://github.com/", "https://guides.github.com/", "https://help.github.com/", "https://docs.github.com/"],
"headers": {
"Accept-Encoding": "zstd, br, gzip, deflate"
}
}
]
}
Example Usage
Consider a workflow file that checks for the status of hyperlinks on push to the master branch,
name: Check .md links
on:
push: [master]
jobs:
markdown-link-check:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
# check out the latest version of the code
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v3
# Checks the status of hyperlinks in .md files in verbose mode
- name: Check links
uses: gaurav-nelson/github-action-markdown-link-check@v1
with:
use-verbose-mode: 'yes'
A file test.md
exists, containing
On running the workflow described above, the output shown below is obtained
Versioning
GitHub Action - Markdown link check follows the GitHub recommended versioning strategy.
- To use a specific released version of the action (Releases):
- uses: gaurav-nelson/github-action-markdown-link-check@1.0.1
- To use a major version of the action:
- uses: gaurav-nelson/github-action-markdown-link-check@v1
- You can also specify a specific commit SHA as an action version:
- uses: gaurav-nelson/github-action-markdown-link-check@44a942b2f7ed0dc101d556f281e906fb79f1f478