Download assets from private Github releases

gh-dl-release

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# gh-dl-release! It works!
# 
# This script downloads an asset from latest or specific Github release of a
# private repo. Feel free to extract more of the variables into command line
# parameters.
#
# PREREQUISITES
#
# curl, wget, jq
#
# USAGE
#
# Set all the variables inside the script, make sure you chmod +x it, then
# to download specific version to my_app.tar.gz:
#
#     gh-dl-release 2.1.1 my_app.tar.gz
#
# to download latest version:
#
#     gh-dl-release latest latest.tar.gz
#
# If your version/tag doesn't match, the script will exit with error.

TOKEN="<github_access_token>"
REPO="<user_or_org>/<repo_name>"
FILE="<name_of_asset_file>"      # the name of your release asset file, e.g. build.tar.gz
VERSION=$1                       # tag name or the word "latest"
GITHUB="https://api.github.com"

alias errcho='>&2 echo'

function gh_curl() {
  curl -H "Authorization: token $TOKEN" \
       -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3.raw" \
       $@
}

if [ "$VERSION" = "latest" ]; then
  # Github should return the latest release first.
  parser=".[0].assets | map(select(.name == \"$FILE\"))[0].id"
else
  parser=". | map(select(.tag_name == \"$VERSION\"))[0].assets | map(select(.name == \"$FILE\"))[0].id"
fi;

asset_id=`gh_curl -s $GITHUB/repos/$REPO/releases | jq "$parser"`
if [ "$asset_id" = "null" ]; then
  errcho "ERROR: version not found $VERSION"
  exit 1
fi;

wget -q --auth-no-challenge --header='Accept:application/octet-stream' \
  https://$TOKEN:@api.github.com/repos/$REPO/releases/assets/$asset_id \
  -O $2

Dont' forget to enable repo permission (yes, exactly root permission, enabling all nested permissions does not work) for the token

Can I download a release asset from a private github repo without creating a personal token and only using the github token provided by github in action workflows?

If anyone interest, give a try: https://github.com/zero88/gh-release-downloader

@faisalkhanani-ih Yes if GitHub token is in workflow within this private Github repo

Thank you so much for making this snippet, it is a real lifesaver!

In my workflow, I had a beta and release feature, but it always gave me back the latest general release, no matter if it was a prerelease or not.
This shouldn't be a big problem if you automate it because there shouldn't be concurent build and release processes at the same time anyway, but I like to be safe, so I made a little improvement to get the latest prerelease or release, what you want:

Replace line 42 with this:
parser=".[] | select(.prerelease == SHOULD_BE_PRERELEASE) | .assets | map(select(.name == \"$FILE\"))[0].id"

If you replace SHOULD_BE_PRERELEASE with true it gives you back the asset id of the latest prerelease,
if you replace it with false, it gives you the asset id of the latest full release.

You can do the same thing for body or draft and stuff, that is just the way you have to filter it.

Hope this helps!

awesome

As we needed some releases that were in the 5th page (so per_page=100 didn't help), I rewrote the query to query latest (it gives latest released) and tag. also needed some more information in the error reporting:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# gh-dl-release! It works!
# 
# This script downloads an asset from latest or specific Github release of a
# private repo. Feel free to extract more of the variables into command line
# parameters.
#
# PREREQUISITES
#
# curl, wget, jq
#
# USAGE
#
# Set all the variables inside the script, make sure you chmod +x it, then
# to download specific version to my_app.tar.gz:
#
#     gh-dl-release 2.1.1 my_app.tar.gz
#
# to download latest version:
#
#     gh-dl-release latest latest.tar.gz
#
# If your version/tag doesn't match, the script will exit with error.

TOKEN="$3"
REPO="$4"
FILE="$2"      # the name of your release asset file, e.g. build.tar.gz
VERSION="$1"                       # tag name or the word "latest"
GITHUB="https://api.github.com"

alias errcho='>&2 echo'

function gh_curl() {
  curl -H "Authorization: token $TOKEN" \
       -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3.raw" \
       $@
}

parser=".assets | map(select(.name == \"$FILE\"))[0].id"
if [ "$VERSION" = "latest" ]; then
  # Github should return the latest release first.
  asset_id=`gh_curl -s $GITHUB/repos/$REPO/releases/latest | jq "$parser"`
else
  asset_id=`gh_curl -s $GITHUB/repos/$REPO/releases/tags/$VERSION | jq "$parser"`
fi;

if [ -z "$asset_id" ]; then
  errcho "ERROR: version not found $VERSION"
  exit 1
fi;
if [ "$asset_id" = "null" ]; then
  errcho "ERROR: file $FILE not found in version $VERSION"
  exit 2
fi;

wget -q --auth-no-challenge --header='Accept:application/octet-stream' \
  https://$TOKEN:@api.github.com/repos/$REPO/releases/assets/$asset_id \
  -O $2

For Windows users, I made a PowerShell equivalent
https://gist.github.com/sonibla/a60fc31b244ceba3220b9bb33316798c

I have updated the code for the latest github api and changed it to supporting for multiple files download. User can set only necessary file names in the array.

TOKEN="<PAT>"
REPO="<REPO>"
VERSION="<RELEASED-VERSION>" 
GITHUB="https://api.github.com"

function gh_curl() {
  curl -H "Authorization: token $TOKEN" \
       -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" \
       $@
}

# assets list you want to download
AseertsList=( 
 asset1.zip asset2.zip
)

assets=$(gh_curl -s $GITHUB/repos/$REPO/releases/tags/$VERSION)

for row in $(echo "${assets}" | jq -c '.assets[]'); do
name=$( jq -r  '.name' <<< "${row}" ) 
echo ${name}
    if [[ ${AseertsList[*]} =~ ${name} ]] ; then

        id=$( jq -r  '.id' <<< "${row}" ) 

        wget -q --auth-no-challenge --header='Accept:application/octet-stream' \
        https://$TOKEN:@api.github.com/repos/$REPO/releases/assets/$asset_id \
        -O test/${name}
    fi
done

using application/octet-stream as Accept header did the trick for me to download from a private repo

Using wget didn't fit my vanilla GH-Hosted-Runners, so I'm dropping here a curl version of that download that worked for me:

curl -L -s -H "Authorization: token $TOKEN" -H 'Accept:application/octet-stream' \
"https://api.github.com/repos/$REPO/releases/assets/$asset_id" \
-o $asset_name

For releases, uses gh release download instead.

gh release download -R MyOrg/MyRepo --pattern 'myproject-*.tar.gz'

for example.

Here are the official docs for anyone else who stumbles on this thread which say to do (note octet-stream here bc I was downloading a binary):

curl -L \
  -H "Accept:  application/octet-stream" \ 
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-TOKEN>"\
  -H "X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2022-11-28" \
  https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/releases/assets/ASSET_ID

If (like me) you're confused about the best way to find out ASSET_ID I'd suggest looking at the json output for the latest release, see the docs here and the code here:

curl -L \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-TOKEN>"\
  -H "X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2022-11-28" \
  https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/releases/latest