11

Looking at the GitHub API reference at http://develop.github.com/p/repo.html, I see all sorts of good stuff, but I don't see any way to rename a repository through the API. Is there any way to do so?

Ryan C. Thompson
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5 Answers5

21

Create some variables for clarity:

user=MyUserName
pass=MyPassword
newName='{"name": "NewNameForRepo"}'
oldName="MyRepo"

Then use curl to make the request:

curl -u "$user:$pass" -X PATCH -d "$newName" https://api.github.com/repos/$user/$oldName
braitsch
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    I've confirmed that this works. I used OAuth2 token instead of `user:pass`. – Paul Annesley Apr 26 '12 at 08:05
  • More clarity: [`-X`](https://stackoverflow.com/a/8502004/1705829) is used to specify another request method besides PUT, GET,HEAD and POST, `patch` is used to modify a resource on the server partially. `-d` is for `POST`ing a key-value pair, see my link on the X flag. – Timo Mar 08 '22 at 11:11
  • Adding to @PaulAnnesley comment, you can do: `curl -u "$user:$token..` instead of `curl -u $user:$pw..` – Timo Mar 08 '22 at 11:14
4

This is possible through the Edit Repository GitHub API method, but here's the simplest example to do this with curl:

curl \
 -H "Authorization: Token [token]" \
 -H "Content-Type:application/json" \
 -H "Accept: application/json" \
 -X PATCH \
 --data '{ "name": "new-repo-name" }' \
 https://api.github.com/repos/owner/old-repo-name
Evandro Coan
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Brendan Forster
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0

Adding additional notes to what braitsch said already,

If you are trying to rename a repository under an organization, add these variables:

myToken='XXXX_Your_Personal_Access_Token_XXXX'
myOrg="MyGithubOrg"
newName='{"name": "NewNameForRepo"}'
oldName="MyRepo"

And, make a curl request like this:

curl -H 'Authorization: token $myToken' -X PATCH -d "$newName" https://api.github.com/repos/$myOrg/$oldName
Raktim Biswas
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0

If we're using GitHub CLI:

gh alias set repo-rename 'api -X PATCH "repos/$1" -f name="$2"'

gh repo-rename username/oldreponame newreponame
Simon Allfrey
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-3

Create a new repo, push to it and delete the old one ?

Stefan Näwe
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  • Or fork/delete through their API. – wnoise Jan 24 '11 at 10:37
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    The create/push/delete solution kind of works, but the new repo would contain whatever I pushed from my local copy of the repo, so it wouldn't necessarily be a perfect copy of the old GitHub repo. Also, wouldn't I lose issues and wiki and stuff if I did that? – Ryan C. Thompson Jan 24 '11 at 19:45
  • Yes, you would lose issues and wiki. Maybe you want to ask Guthub's support team? – Stefan Näwe Jan 25 '11 at 08:19