get list of git branches for a repo hosted on github

Question

Is there a command line way of getting the list of branches available in a repository hosted in GitHub (without creating and running commands from within a clone)?

I tried using cURL on the URL that shows the branches list and getting the content.

Answer 1

git ls-remote --heads <repo-url>

Man page of git ls-remote.

For example, to get the branches of Git's Git repository, use

git ls-remote --heads git://github.com/git/git.git

Output:

121f71f0da1bc9a4e1e96be2c3e683191a82a354    refs/heads/maint
f623ca1cae600e97cb0b38131fdd33e4fb669cf8    refs/heads/master
8e148144574e6c6511b591286e44a677a260d760    refs/heads/next
fcdb578342aeaf355c296026af08093b20aab9b4    refs/heads/pu
5321cb29c8f709669c5e4a04f502cd984623592c    refs/heads/todo

Answer 2

Using the GitHub API: Send a GET HTTP request to https://api.github.com/repos/username/reponame/branches.

The reply should be an array of objects, which have the name attribute being the branch name.

Source: List branches