Download a single file from a private GitHub repo. You'll need an access token as described in this GitHub Help article: https://help.github.com/articles/creating-an-access-token-for-command-line-use

gistfile1.sh

curl -H 'Authorization: token INSERTACCESSTOKENHERE' -H 'Accept: application/vnd.github.v3.raw' -O -L https://api.github.com/repos/owner/repo/contents/path

Ah I figured it out. This works!

ACCESS_TOKEN='1234567890abcdefghijk'
REPO_DOWNLOAD_URL=$(curl -u "${ACCESS_TOKEN}:" -s https://api.github.com/repos/owner-name/repo-name/releases/latest | \
  awk '/tag_name/ {print "https://api.github.com/repos/owner-name/repo-name/tarball/" substr($2, 2, length($2)-3) ""}'
)

curl -u "${ACCESS_TOKEN}:" -LkSs "{$REPO_DOWNLOAD_URL}" -o - | tar xzf -

This finds the latest release for repository owner-name/repo-name, and then grabs the tar of it and opens it up in the current directory. A user just needs an Oauth access token!

when using -O to save a file with the same name, it includes request params in the file name. so i prefer setting ref via -d like this:

curl -GLOf -H "Authorization: token ${GITHUB_TOKEN?not set}" -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v4.raw" \
  "https://api.github.com/repos/$ORG/$REPO/contents/$FILEPATH" -d ref="$REVISION"

-G causes data (specified by -d) to be added as URL request params, but not the saved filename. -f ensures if there is an issue, like 401 bad auth, the command returns an error instead of just saving the file with the error response.

I've created this simple gist in case someone needs to download a json file from a private repository and use it as a dictionary: https://gist.github.com/porthunt/b994154c054deeab7ab4073273aa75bc