GitHub Api download zip or tarball link

Question

There was a good link here about how the zip/tarball string is created

When I download a zip from github, what is the hex string at the end of the file name represent?

But I'm looking at the GitHub APIv3 and I was curious if I'm missing something.

1. Is there a way to get the zip/tarball link via an API call?

2. If not, is there a way I can build that string without using the git binary or library? Meaning, can I use various API calls to pull out th data a need and assemble to URL I need?

I know the second question is a little unreasonable for stackoverflow and this is a bit of a fun project for me, so I would prefer on the second question if you just kind of nudged me in the right direction as opposed to throwing down a code snippet. Or just told me if it was possible.

Answer 1

You can wget your way out of the GitHub repo to get a tar file (archive):

wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/User/repo/archive/master.tar.gz  # better, if the certificate authorities are present: wget https://github.com/User/repo/archive/master.tar.gz 

will get you a file named 'master' from the user 'User''s repo 'repo'.

The updated V3 API url is:

https://api.github.com/repos/User/repo/:archive_format/:ref # # two possibilities for fomat: https://api.github.com/repos/User/repo/tarball/master https://api.github.com/repos/User/repo/zipball/master  # from github example: $curl -L https://api.github.com/repos/octokit/octokit.rb/tarball > octokit.tar.gz 

You can then tar xpvf master, getting the full archive. It will create a directory following the naming convention described in the question you mentioned.

No git binary is needed to get an archive from GitHub, thanks to their download service "Nodeload".

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ligemer proposed in an edit the following example:

Edit 2016-08-25 - Shell Example With Wget, Variables, and Untar:

#!/bin/bash -ex  # arguments: # token = $1 # organization = $2 # repo name = $3 # branch = $4  wget --header="Authorization: token ${1}" --header="Accept:application/vnd.github.v3.raw" -O - https://api.github.com/repos/${2}/${3}/tarball/${4} | tar xz 

Call via:

$ scriptName.sh token my-organization site.com master 

The command above will download and extract the Github folder to the same directory as the script.

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Diogo Quintela suggests in the comments:

The following example allow the download, extract and cut the top level directory

curl -L https://api.github.com/repos/octokit/octokit.rb/tarball | tar xz --strip=1  

Answer 2

The syntax is described in the docs:

GET /repos/:owner/:repo/:archive_format/:ref 

The following example URL will point (via a 302 redirect) to a zip archive of master in the hadley/devtools repo:

https://api.github.com/repos/hadley/devtools/zipball/master

(The other option for archive_format is tarball.)

I have no idea since when this API is available.