Add outputs for the changes data

README.md

@@ -83,8 +83,8 @@ Configure this action by either inlining these options in your workflow file, or
 | `retry-on-snapshot-warnings`\*         | Enable or disable retrying the action every 10 seconds while waiting for dependency submission actions to complete.                                                                                     | `true`, `false`                                                                                              | `false`       |
 | `retry-on-snapshot-warnings-timeout`\* | Maximum amount of time (in seconds) to retry the action while waiting for dependency submission actions to complete.                                                                                    | Any positive integer                                                                                         | 120           |
 | `warn-only`+                           | When set to `true`, the action will log all vulnerabilities as warnings regardless of the severity, and the action will complete with a `success` status. This overrides the `fail-on-severity` option. | `true`, `false`                                                                                              | `false`       |
-| `show-openssf-scorecard-levels`        | When set to `true`, the action will output information about all the known OpenSSF Scorecard scores for the dependencies changed in this pull request.                                                  | `true`, `false`                                                                                              | `true`        | 
-| `warn-on-openssf-scorecard-level`      | When `show-openssf-scorecard-levels` is set to `true`, this option lets you configure the threshold for when a score is considered too low and gets a :warning: warning in the CI.                      | Any positive integer                                                                                         | 3             |          
+| `show-openssf-scorecard-levels`        | When set to `true`, the action will output information about all the known OpenSSF Scorecard scores for the dependencies changed in this pull request.                                                  | `true`, `false`                                                                                              | `true`        |
+| `warn-on-openssf-scorecard-level`      | When `show-openssf-scorecard-levels` is set to `true`, this option lets you configure the threshold for when a score is considered too low and gets a :warning: warning in the CI.                      | Any positive integer                                                                                         | 3             |
 
 \*not supported for use with GitHub Enterprise Server
 
@@ -161,7 +161,26 @@ The Dependency Review GitHub Action check will only block a pull request from be
 
 ## Outputs
 
-`comment-content` is generated with the same content as would be present in a Dependency Review Action comment.
+- `comment-content` is generated with the same content as would be present in a Dependency Review Action comment.
+- `dependency-changes` holds all dependency changes in a JSON format. The following outputs are subsets of `dependency-changes` filtered based on the configuration:
+- `vulnerable-changes` holds information about dependency changes with vulnerable dependencies in a JSON format.
+- `invalid-license-changes` holds information about invalid or non-compliant license dependency changes in a JSON format.
+- `denied-changes` holds information about denied dependency changes in a JSON format.
+
+> [!NOTE]
+> Action outputs are unicode strings [with a 1MB size limit](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/creating-actions/metadata-syntax-for-github-actions#outputs-for-docker-container-and-javascript-actions).
+
+> [!IMPORTANT]
+> If you use these outputs in a run-step, you must store the ouput data in an envrioment variable instead of using the output directly. Using an output directly might break shell scripts. For example:
+>
+> ```yaml
+> env:
+>   VULNERABLE_CHANGES: ${{ steps.review.outputs.vulnerable-changes }}
+> run: |
+>   echo "$VULNERABLE_CHANGES" | jq
+> ```
+>
+> instead of direct `echo '${{ steps.review.outputs.vulnerable-changes }}'`. See [examples](docs/examples.md) for more.
 
 ## Getting help
 

action.yml

@@ -76,6 +76,14 @@ inputs:
 outputs:
   comment-content:
     description: Prepared dependency report comment
+  dependency-changes:
+    description: All dependency changes (JSON)
+  vulnerable-changes:
+    description: Vulnerable dependency changes (JSON)
+  invalid-license-changes:
+    description: Invalid license dependency changes (JSON)
+  denied-changes:
+    description: Denied dependency changes (JSON)
 
 runs:
   using: 'node20'

docs/examples.md

@@ -166,7 +166,8 @@ jobs:
 
 ## Getting the results of the action in a later step
 
-Using the `comment-content` output you can get the results of the action in a workflow step.
+- `comment-content` contains the output of the results comment for the entire run.
+`dependency-changes`, `vulnerable-changes`, `invalid-license-changes` and `denied-changes` are all JSON objects that allow you to access individual sets of changes.
 
 ```yaml
 name: 'Dependency Review'
@@ -192,10 +193,18 @@ jobs:
         # make sure this step runs even if the previous failed
         if: ${{ failure() && steps.review.conclusion == 'failure' }}
         shell: bash
-        env:
-          comment: ${{ steps.review.outputs.comment-content }}
-        run: |
-          echo "$comment"  # do something with the comment
+        env: # store comment HTML data in an environment variable
+          COMMENT: ${{ steps.review.outputs.comment-content }}
+        run: | # do something with the comment:
+          echo "$COMMENT"
+      - name: 'List vulnerable dependencies'
+        # make sure this step runs even if the previous failed
+        if: ${{ failure() && steps.review.conclusion == 'failure' }}
+        shell: bash
+        env: # store JSON data in an environment variable
+          VULNERABLE_CHANGES: ${{ steps.review.outputs.vulnerable-changes }}
+        run: | # do something with the JSON:
+          echo "$VULNERABLE_CHANGES" | jq '.[].package_url'
 ```
 
 ## Exclude dependencies from the license check

src/main.ts

@@ -140,14 +140,20 @@ async function run(): Promise<void> {
     }
 
     if (config.vulnerability_check) {
+      core.setOutput('vulnerable-changes', JSON.stringify(vulnerableChanges))
       summary.addChangeVulnerabilitiesToSummary(vulnerableChanges, minSeverity)
       printVulnerabilitiesBlock(vulnerableChanges, minSeverity, warnOnly)
     }
     if (config.license_check) {
+      core.setOutput(
+        'invalid-license-changes',
+        JSON.stringify(invalidLicenseChanges)
+      )
       summary.addLicensesToSummary(invalidLicenseChanges, config)
       printLicensesBlock(invalidLicenseChanges, warnOnly)
     }
     if (config.deny_packages || config.deny_groups) {
+      core.setOutput('denied-changes', JSON.stringify(deniedChanges))
       summary.addDeniedToSummary(deniedChanges)
       printDeniedDependencies(deniedChanges, config)
     }
@@ -157,6 +163,7 @@ async function run(): Promise<void> {
       createScorecardWarnings(scorecard, config)
     }
 
+    core.setOutput('dependency-changes', JSON.stringify(changes))
     summary.addScannedDependencies(changes)
     printScannedDependencies(changes)
     await commentPr(core.summary, config)