Bulk delete github repos (2023 Powershell Remix)

README.md

Use this trick to bulk delete your old repos or old forks (2023 Powershell Version)

(Inspired by https://medium.com/@icanhazedit/clean-up-unused-github-rpositories-c2549294ee45#.3hwv4nxv5 and https://gist.github.com/mrkpatchaa/63720cbf744a2bf59a3e9cfe73fc33b0) and a little help from ChatGPT.

from @mrkpatchaa's original instructions

with additional notes from me

1. Open in a new tab all to-be-deleted github repositores (Use the mouse’s middle click or Ctrl + Click) https://github.com/username?tab=repositories

Note: in Chrome, you can group them all to make it a little easier

2. Use one tab https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall to shorten them to a list.

3. Save that list to some path

4. The list should be in the form of “ur_username\repo_name” per line. Use regex search (Sublime text could help). Search for \|.* and replace by empty.

Notes:

List is actually in https://github.com/USERNAME/REPO format

If you use VS Code, use \| (.+) as your find string, be sure to turn on the regular expressions button (the one with the asterisk, or Alt-R)

5. Register a new personal access token with a 'delete_repo perm' https://github.com/settings/tokens/new

6. Copy the access_token and run the following line replacing xxx with your access token.

Copy-paste the following script into a .ps1 file, run it in powershell with ./scriptname.ps1

# Set your GitHub token, file path and username
# Generate token with delete_repo scope - https://github.com/settings/tokens/new
$token = "<personal access token with delete_repo scope>"
$filePath = "<path to text file>"
$errored = $False # to check if it worked, there is probably a better way to do this

# Read the file and iterate through each line
Get-Content $filePath | ForEach-Object {
    $sourceUrl = $_

    # Insert "api." before "github.com" and "repos" after it
    $url = $sourceUrl -replace "https://github.com/", "https://api.github.com/repos/"

    # Create custom headers
    $headers = @{
        "Accept" = "application/vnd.github+json"
        "Authorization" = "Bearer $token"
        "X-GitHub-Api-Version" = "2022-11-28"
    }

    try {
        # Send the API call with Invoke-RestMethod
        Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $url -Method Delete -Headers $headers 
    }
    catch {
        $errored = $True #stops success message if something went wrong
        Write-Host "Failed to delete repository $url."
        Write-Host "Exception Message: $($_.Exception.Message)"
        if ($_.Exception.Response) {
            $errorResponse = $_.Exception.Response.GetResponseStream()
            $reader = [System.IO.StreamReader]::new($errorResponse)
            $errorContent = $reader.ReadToEnd()
            Write-Host "Response Content: $errorContent"
        }
    }    
    finally {
        if ($errored -eq $False) {
            Write-Host "Deleted repository at $sourceUrl"
        }
    }
}