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

thanks to
@peteratticusberg commented on Aug 9, 2015
would like to add that if you want to retrieve a file stored in a specific tag (say: my_unit_test) you would specify the curl command as follows (as in a bash script):

USER="me"
PASSWD="mypasswd"
OUTPUT_FILEPATH="./foo"
OWNER="mycompany"
REPOSITORY="boo"
RESOURCE_PATH="project-x/a/b/c.py"
TAG="my_unit_test"
curl \
    -u "$USER:$PASSWD" \
    -H 'Accept: application/vnd.github.v4.raw' \
    -o "$OUTPUT_FILEPATH" \
    -L "https://api.github.com/repos/$OWNER/$REPOSITORY/contents/$RESOURCE_PATH?ref=$TAG"

Does anyone else run into the issue where when they get the zipped or tarred file, they cannot unzip it (or untar it)?

$ curl -H 'Authorization: token my-oauth-token-here' -H 'Accept: application/vnd.github.v3.raw' -O -L https://api.github.com/repos/owner-name/repo-name/releases/assets/v1.1.0.tar.gz
% Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100   130  100   130    0     0    473      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--   474
$ ls
v1.1.0.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf v1.1.0.tar.gz 
tar: Unrecognized archive format
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.

Somehow, using the command line doesn't get the full zipped/tarred file. when I click the link in the UI, I can successful unzip/untar the file via the command line after it downloads to my machine.

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