(Re)fork any gist, including your own

readme.md

Want to fork your own gists? No fork button? No problem! Install this user script by clicking refork.user.js' "raw" link down below: ⇓

refork.user.js

// ==UserScript==
// @name           (Re)fork any gist, including your own
// @namespace      https://github.com/johan
// @version        2.0 - updated 2015-06-21
// @description    Adds a "fork" button to gists missing one at gist.github.com, so you can create multiple forks
// @match          https://gist.github.com/*
// @include        https://gist.github.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

if (/^\/[^\/]+\/\d+/.test(location.pathname) &&
    !document.querySelector('form[action$="/fork"]')) {
  var actions = document.querySelector('.gisthead .pagehead-actions')
    , auth = document.querySelector('input[name="authenticity_token"]').outerHTML
    , fork = document.createElement('li')
    , url = location.pathname + '/fork'
    ;
  fork.innerHTML = '<form accept-charset="UTF-8" action="'+ url + '" method="post"><div style="margin:0;padding:0;display:inline"><input name="utf8" type="hidden" value="✓">' + auth + '</div><button class="btn btn-sm" type="submit"><span class="octicon octicon-repo-forked"></span>Fork</button></form>';
  actions.appendChild(fork);
}

Awesome user script. Works like a charm. :)

Really nice

Does this still work for anyone? I haven't been on the site in a while and I don't recall what it used to look like but it appears the content on the site changed and broke the script logic.

Never mind, found the announcement: https://github.com/blog/1276-welcome-to-a-new-gist

Interesting. I forked the script and updated it to account for the site changes but the userscript only runs when a full page refresh is invoked (confirmed with a quick console.log statement before any conditional logic). Some research into the problem reveals they are using pjax https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax/ to improve perceived page load times and the ajax style page refreshes bypass the page load mechanism that normally would cause the userscript to be invoked.

Theoretically you could catch the pjax load/completed events and run the script logic but hooking the custom events without jQuery is too big a challenge to tackle tonight.

$(document).on('pjax:complete', function() {
// Call button inject logic here
})


It seems jQuery doesn't use dom events (except in some fallback scenarios) and thus I was unable to hook 'pjax:complete' or any other jQuery event for that matter. As a workaround, a MutationObserver was registered to monitor changes to the '#js-pjax-container' element and button injection is now rerun after dom modifications are detected. Probably not the cleanest or most elegant solution but given the constraints of the extension sandbox, it seemed reasonable. I'd love to see other takes on the problem but for now this approach seems to work.

Btw, very creative solution Johan... thanks!

URL has changed to location.pathname + '/fork'

i came across this from stack over flow when i searched on bing "github how to fork gist"

this is exactly what i needed. however has this been updated to included the location.pathname + '/fork' like eric-wieser says?

also what do you mean user script? i dont get how to use this. im having to convert it to a bookmarklet.

found updated version here:
https://gist.github.com/U-D13/7085254

This will never work again unless github blesses it. Do a view-source and search for authenticity_token. Game over, man. Game over.

This no longer works because the fork link has been replaced with a form that includes a authenticity_token field. I don't think there is any way around that from the browser.
I now use https://github.com/defunkt/gist from the CLI to:

• # Define your original gist url (I have to use the ssh url to get it to work for my credential-helper)
  original_url="git@gist.github.com:1306266.git"
• # Create a new gist
  url="$(date | gist -f temp)"
• # Clone it
  git clone $url; cd $(basename $url)
• # Add the original gist as a remote and fetch it
  git remote add alt $original_url; git fetch alt
• # Check out the original
  git reset --hard alt/main
• # Push to the new gist
  git push -f origin main

Note

The # are in there so you can copy-pasta the whole block into the terminal 😉

Update on 2022/04/14

• I change the branch name to main because github changed their default branch causing my code above to error.
• Here is an example of the result https://gist.github.com/RichardBronosky/43023e5b06dc17bd465293bcdf3d8f00/revisions

@RichardBronosky I assume github does not recognize it as a fork and doesn't link the two gists together, right?

@RichardBronosky I assume github does not recognize it as a fork and doesn't link the two gists together, right?

@ackvf I updated my comment to include a link to a fork I just made of this gist. The gist.github.com web interface doesn't indicate the fork, but the complete history is there including accurate authors and dates. I have an old fork of this repo https://gist.github.com/RichardBronosky/4d8a7aed9f8dc40eea669a0985ac8d79 and it does indicate the fork. I'll compare the 2 and see if I can find anything in .git folder that will serve as the fork indicator.

Thank you. I've already been cloning my gists using Sourcetree and actually I've been using local repo to manipulate / clean the gist history.
Anyway, forking own repo does not seem to be supported at all: "message": "You cannot fork your own gist."

community/community#14882

@RichardBronosky did you ever figure out what specifically makes a fork be indicated in the gist web interface?