[feat req] download by artifact-id(s)

[ramonpetgrave64]

What would you like to be added?

The ability to download an artifact by specifying it's artifact-id from actions/upload-artifact. The JavaScript library already supports this.

Since we often want to download multiple artifacts with one invocation of this Action, we could make the new input be artifact-ids (plural), instead of only artifact-id (singular).

example:

- uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
  with:
    ...
    # IDs of the artifacts to download, comma-separated.
    # Either inputs `artifact-ids` or `name` can be used, but not both.
    # Optional.
    artifact-ids:
    ...

Why is this needed?

actions/upload-artifact@v4 now uploads artifacts in an immutable manner: If an artifact were to be re-uploaded, or overwritten with the same name, then it gets a new artifact-id.

• https://github.com/actions/upload-artifact?tab=readme-ov-file#improvements

To take advantage of the risks this new immutable artifact-id mitigates actions/download-artifact@v4 can accept a new input to allow the user to specify know artifact ids, instead of the possibly overwritten artifact with the same name.

[ramonpetgrave64]

While we wait for this to get picked up, I’ve been downloading the artifacts with artifact-id and actions/github-script@v7 after npm install @actions/artifact@2.1.9.

…

jobs:
  build-low-perms:
    outputs:
      build-artifact-id: ${{ steps.upload-artifact.outputs.artifact-id }}

…

      - name: upload-artifact
        id: upload-artifact
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@834a144ee995460fba8ed112a2fc961b36a5ec5a #v4.3.6
        with:
          name: ${{ inputs.build-artifact-name }}
          path: ${{ inputs.subject-path }}
          if-no-files-found: error

…

  sign:

…

      - run: npm install @actions/artifact@2.1.9
      - name: download-build-artifact
        uses: actions/github-script@60a0d83039c74a4aee543508d2ffcb1c3799cdea # v7.0.1
        env:
          ARTIFACT_ID: ${{ needs.build-low-perms.outputs.build-artifact-id }}
          ARTIFACTS_FOLDER: ./artifacts
        with:
          script: |
            const {default: artifactClient} = require('@actions/artifact')
            const { ARTIFACT_ID, ARTIFACTS_FOLDER } = process.env
            await artifactClient.downloadArtifact(ARTIFACT_ID, { path: ARTIFACTS_FOLDER })