How to list organization's private repositories via GitHub API?

Question

I'm trying to get a list of an organization's all repositories, including private ones. (Or to be more specific, all of the private repositories a certain user has access to.)

Reqesting info for the organization (https://api.github.com/orgs/acme?access_token=[...]) shows that there indeed are plenty of private repositories:

...
"public_repos": 5,
"total_private_repos": 68, 
"owned_private_repos": 68, 
...

(The access token I'm using had been previously generated using the API for username/passwd.)

But whatever I try to list the repos...

https://api.github.com/orgs/acme/repos?access_token=[...]   

...GitHub API just returns the 5 public repositories. (Documentation says type=all is default. Also tried adding the parameter type=private; no difference.)

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

The user to whom the access token was generated in fact has Push & Pull access to just some of the organization's private repositories, but none of those appear in the list I get (just the 5 public repositories).

Reata

Everything you're doing looks fine to me. Might be a good idea to contact GitHub support: [email protected]. One thing though -- which scopes did you define when creating the OAuth token? – Chronology

@IvanZuzak: Ah, I hadn't noticed you specify scopes when creating the token... I had used a Python example script where public_repo scope was used. So, by creating a new token with repo scope I got it working. Thanks! Can you add that as an answer too, so I can accept it? – Reata

Cool, I'm glad that resolved the issue for you. Wrote up a short answer below. Cheers! – Chronology

In addition to the above, if your organization has over 30 repos, you'll need to page through the data with a &page=2 parameter – Stevestevedore

You can also use the &per_page=100 parameter to retrieve more results at one time. – Stevestevedore

Answer 1

Everything you are doing is OK. However, when creating OAuth tokens for authentication, be sure that you are defining the right scopes. Each scope defines a specific set of permitted actions (information you can read/write), so you should check that you are creating the token with the repo scope.

Chronology

Answer 2

Your url needs a ? not an &. It should be this:

https://api.github.com/orgs/acme/repos?access_token=your_access_token

Matchmark

Answer 3

It should also be noted that if you are accessing private repositories from an Organization, the OAuth application needs to be authorized by the owners depending on the settings.

https://help.github.com/articles/authorizing-oauth-apps/

For organizations with OAuth App access restrictions, you can request that organization admins approve the application for use in that organization. If the organization does not approve the application, then the application will only be able to access the organization's public resources. If you're an organization admin, you can approve the application yourself.

For organizations without OAuth App access restrictions, the application will automatically be authorized for access to that organization's resources. For this reason, you should be careful about which OAuth Apps you approve for access to your personal account resources as well as any organization resources.

Olpe

Answer 4

username = "Your_org"
token = "your_TOKEN"
request = requests.get('https://api.github.com/orgs/'+username+'/repos?per_page=1000', auth=(username, token))

Kiki

The maximum per page is 100. – Forepleasure

Answer 5

I've recently had the same symptoms but my cause was different. I'd registered a GitHub App, not an OAuth App, without really being aware of the difference. For a GitHub App to list private repos from an organisation, the app has to be installed for that organisation, as well as being authorised by the user. Otherwise, you just get the public repos listed.

Zareba

Please can you elaborate more? I'm having trouble fetching private repos from my github app. – Mcculley

When you register your app with GitHub, you can create either an OAuth App or a GitHub App. If you're trying to use the OAuth API, you need to have registered an OAuth App, but the default seems to be a GitHub App and you need to know that that's not what you want. – Zareba

The key difference here is that an OAuth App is authorised by an individual user to do things on their behalf; a GitHub App needs to be installed and authorised by the organisation before it can access private things. – Zareba

Answer 6

You can use the gh command https://cli.github.com/

gh repo list <org name> -L <total number of repos> --json sshUrl -q .[].sshUrl

To see the list of json fields run gh repo list --json help. If you only want to see public or private repos then you can use these flags

FLAGS
      --archived          Show only archived repositories
      --no-archived       Omit archived repositories
      --private           Show only private repositories
      --public            Show only public repositories

Vaish

Answer 7

The 2022 answer:

## List all repos ( private, internal, public )

curl "https://api.github.com/orgs/foobar-org/repos" \
     -u 'username:<personal access token>'

GitHub API reference here.

Mcelrath

Answer 8

# Get Github Repo Names

"""
>>>> pip install PyGithub
>>>> Reference Link: https://pypi.org/project/PyGithub/
>>>> Getting the access token.
        Go to github <settings>.
        Go to <Developer Settings>.
        Go to <Personal access tokens>.
        Click on <Generate new token> button.
        Add a note.
        Check all the setting in that page.
        Click on <Generate token> button.
        Copy  the access token and paste in below code.

>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
"""

from github import Github

access_token = ''
g = Github(access_token)
repo_list = [i for i in g.get_user().get_repos()]
for i in repo_list:
    repo_name = str(i).replace('Repository(full_name="', '')
    repo_name = str(repo_name).replace('")', '')
    print('https://www.github.com/' + repo_name)

Luetic

Two things wrong here: (1) code without comment and (2) the code lists a user's repos, not an organisation's repos, which is what the question asked for. – Zareba