Create a branch on Github without access to a local git repo using http://hurl.eu/

README.md

Ever had the need to create a branch in a repo on Github without wanting (or being able) to access a local repo?

With the aid of the Github API and any online request app this is a piece of cake!

Just follow these steps:

1. Open an online request app (like apirequest.io, hurl.it pipedream.com, reqbin.com, or webhook.site)

2. Find the revision you want to branch from. Either on Github itself or by doing a GET request from Hurl: https://api.github.com/repos/<AUTHOR>/<REPO>/git/refs/heads

3. Copy the revision hash

4. Do a POST request from Hurl to https://api.github.com/repos/<AUTHOR>/<REPO>/git/refs with the following as the POST body :

    {
      "ref": "refs/heads/<NEW-BRANCH-NAME>",
      "sha": "<HASH-TO-BRANCH-FROM>"
    }
   

   (obviously replacing the <NEW-BRANCH-NAME> with the name your want the new branch to have and the <HASH-TO-BRANCH-FROM> with, you know, the hash of the revision you want to branch from)

   You will need to use HTTP basic and fill in your Github credentials to access the Github API.

5. Press the Send button and your branch will be created!

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The situation I ran into, was that I found a web app that had a demo but the demo wasn't hosted anywhere. So all I needed to do was clone the repo, create a branches called gh-pages (which automatically creates a site hosted by github) and I could watch the demo online without any local repo.

I've also used this to submit (simple) fixes to repos that require a pull-request from a branch that is not master.

Do you have any other use cases or maybe any other service than Hurl that could be used?

Let me know in the comments!

This was super helpful! Thank you!

Hi, I created a Python script and function forked from your repo. Thank you, this helped me test the GitHub API was working without Python errors. It is at:
"Create a branch on Github using API and Python"
https://gist.github.com/auwsome/123ae1f493dfd9b08434

Thank You, it was very helpful 🙂

PyGithub usage https://github.com/PyGithub/PyGithub/blob/74cd6856de404dc3109360860b712d62458c24eb/github/Repository.py#L906-L924

I Have An Error :Unexpected Token ":"
How Can I Solve It ??
Thanks

@AhmedAbdElfatah999 Without any further information your question would be hard to answer. This also isn't really the right place to ask, so I doubt you'll be able to get a decent response here. You might want to try asking your question on https://stackoverflow.com/ or at the gist that has the code your are running?

Thanks

hurl link is down

Yeah. Sadly, it been down for ages. I was hoping it might come back online... Anyway, I've changed the gist to suggest various alternatives.

thank you! works great

Thank you!
After a great deal of head scratching and reading through git internals, I found this gist

@SiddharthShyniben Glad I could be of service!

Here is working snippet in python https://stackoverflow.com/a/67891724/1246764