GitHub Action to Purge Cloudflare Cache 🗑️

⚠️ Note: To use this action, you must have access to the GitHub Actions feature. GitHub Actions are currently only available in public beta. You can apply for the GitHub Actions beta here.

This simple action calls the Cloudflare API to purge the cache of your website, which can be a helpful last step after deploying a new version.

Usage

All sensitive variables should be set as encrypted secrets in the action's configuration.

Configuration Variables

Key	Value	Suggested Type	Required
CLOUDFLARE_ZONE	Required for both methods below. The Zone ID of your domain, which can be found in the right sidebar of your domain's overview page on the Cloudflare dashboard. For example, xyz321xyz321xyz321xyz321xyz321xy.	secret	Yes
PURGE_URLS	Optional. An array of fully qualified URLs to purge. For example: ["https://jarv.is/style.css", "https://jarv.is/favicon.ico"]. If unset, the action will purge everything (which is suggested — more info below).	env	No

Authentication Variables

Both authentication methods below require you to grab information from the API Tokens page in the dashboard. Details on the inner workings of each method can be found in Cloudflare's API docs.

Option 1: Restricted API Token

API Tokens are a new feature as of August 2019. They allow you to restrict the scope of this action to only purging the cache of zones you specify. In other words, this is much safer than allowing this action complete control of your entire Cloudflare account. (I'm not evil though, I promise. 😊)

Key	Value	Type
CLOUDFLARE_TOKEN	The restricted API Token with permissions to purge the cache of one or more zones.	secret

Creating a token can be tricky, so here's what you should enter on this page to create a token for purging the cache of a single domain on your account:

Option 2: Global API Key

This is the "traditional" method of authenticating — simply grab your "Global API Key" from the dashboard. Using this method also requires a second environment variable with the email address linked to your account.

Key	Value	Type
CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL	The email address you registered your Cloudflare account with. For example, [email protected].	secret
CLOUDFLARE_KEY	Your Cloudflare API key, which can be generated using these instructions.	secret

workflow.yml Example

Place in a .yml file such as this one in your .github/workflows folder. Refer to the documentation on workflow YAML syntax here.

name: Deploy my website
on: push

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:

    # Put steps here to build your site, deploy it to a service, etc.

    - name: Purge cache
      uses: jakejarvis/cloudflare-purge-action@master
      env:
        # Zone is required by both authentication methods
        CLOUDFLARE_ZONE: ${{ secrets.CLOUDFLARE_ZONE }}

        CLOUDFLARE_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.CLOUDFLARE_TOKEN }}
        # ...or:
        CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL: ${{ secrets.CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL }}
        CLOUDFLARE_KEY: ${{ secrets.CLOUDFLARE_KEY }}

Purging specific files

To purge only specific files, you can pass an array of fully qualified URLs via a fourth environment variable named PURGE_URLS. Unfortunately, Cloudflare doesn't support wildcards (unless you're on the insanely expensive Enterprise plan) so in order to purge a folder, you'd need to list every file in that folder. It's probably safer to leave this out and purge everything, but in case you want really to, the syntax is as follows:

PURGE_URLS: '["https://jarv.is/style.css", "https://jarv.is/favicon.ico"]'

License

This project is distributed under the MIT license.