Unrecognized named-value: 'matrix' in job if conditional

Describe the bug A job generates a matrix as an output and I have a subsequent job that depends on the generation of that matrix. The first job does an API call to get all customers which each have a unique schema association. I only want to run this second job in the event that my input SCHEMA array contains the schema of a given return record. However, when I execute the build I get the following error: Unrecognized named-value: 'matrix'. Located at position 26 within expression: contains(inputs.SCHEMAS, matrix.customer.schema). The pattern works without the conditional, but does not fit my use case.

This is a rough idea of what the job looks like.

job-name:
  runs-on: ubuntu-latest
  needs: get-customers
  if: contains(inputs.SCHEMAS, matrix.customer.schema)
  strategy:
    matrix:
      customer: ${{fromJson(needs.get-customers.outputs.customers)}}
  steps:
     ....

Expected behavior The job should only run when the matrix schema is contained within the input SCHEMA

Runner Version and Platform

ubuntu-latest

What’s not working?

The use of matrix in a job level conditional

[markstijnman-shell]

I ran into this issue today as well. Can the matrix context indeed be added to jobs.<job_id>.if ? I would imagine that if it is available for runs-on, it should be possible to make it available for jobs.<job_id>.if too, as I would expect both are evaluated before starting the job.

My use case is in reusable workflows, where I also want to reuse my matrix for several projects, However, there are projects who don’t need all configurations. So I want to allow the calling workflow to use input parameters to skip certain matrix entries. For example, I would very much like something like this to work, which would allow the calling workflow to control whether to build for win32:

on:
  workflow_call:
    inputs:
      build-win32:
        required: true
        type: boolean
      
jobs:
  build:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        include:
          - os: windows-latest
            arch: "win64"
            build: true
          - os: windows-latest
            arch: "win32"
            build: ${{ inputs.build-win32 }}
          - os: ubuntu-latest
            build: true
        
    if: ${{ matrix.build }}
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}

I’ve seen workarounds that use a separate job to set up a matrix, but that solution is (1) much harder to understand than this one, and (2) will introduce an extra job in your output that is just noise.

[AlexandreBrg]

I had the same issue, it seems that if statement is evaluated before running a matrix of jobs. I found this topic on GitHub forum about this problem.