How can I git clone over https with a personal access token containing '/'?

Question

I am trying to clone a repository from Bitbucket using a personal access token:

$ git clone https://{user}:{token}@bitbucket.repo/myrepo.git

Bitbucket just created four times in a row an access token containing a forward slash (/). Using such a token with git clone produces the following error:

fatal: unable to access 'https://{user}:{token}@bitbucket.repo/myrepo.git': URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL

The fifth token (without a /) worked. So, how can I git clone over https with a personal access token containing /?

Answer 1

Replace all / with their url-encoded representation %2F.

Answer 2

When you generate token from bitbucket, it is more likely to generate special characters in the access token. While you pass these tokens as is with the reserved special characters, you will end up with an error. To overcome that, you need to replace the special characters with the corresponding characters.

!   #   $    &   '   (   )   *   +   ,   /   :   ;   =   ?   @   [   ]
%21 %23 %24 %26 %27 %28 %29 %2A %2B %2C %2F %3A %3B %3D %3F %40 %5B %5D

In your case, you need to replace / with %2F.

Ref: https://fabianlee.org/2016/09/07/git-calling-git-clone-using-password-with-special-character/