Downloading gists from Github made simple

Last Updated : 29 Sep, 2022

GithubGist is a place where you can create a private or a public gist i.e store your files either privately or publicly. Let us assume a scenario where you have written a good number of gists for your project and you want to download a set of them. The only way you can do it using GithubGist is to open each and every individual gist to download ZIP or clone via HTTP or SSH. This article is all about making the above task simpler. Using the commands below, you can even download gists from other github users excluding the private ones until you know their password. We will be using requests package for this propose. It is an awesome package to send HTTP requests with minimal code. Installation 1. Download the package from PyPI via terminal using pip3 Syntax:

pip3 install requests

Note: To become a root user, run the following command:

sudo pip3 install requests

Python3 script The script can not run on an online IDE and therefore you can click here to see how it works.

Python

import requests import os  def create_directory(dirname):     #Creates a new directory if a directory with dirname does not exist      try:         os.stat(dirname)     except:         os.mkdir(dirname)  def show(obj):     #Displays the items in the obj      for i in range(len(obj)):         print(str(i)+': '+str(obj[i]))  def auth():     #Asks for the user details      ask_auth = input("Do you want to download gists from your account                                ? Type 'yes' or 'no': ")     if(ask_auth=="yes"):         user = input("Enter your username: ")         password = input("Enter your password: ")         request = requests.get('https://api.github.com/users/'+user+'/gists'                                              , auth=(user, password))     elif(ask_auth=="no"):         user = input("Enter username: ")         request = requests.get('https://api.github.com/users/'                                                        +user+'/gists')     return [ask_auth, user, request]  def load(request):    #Loads the files and the gist urls     output = request.text.split(",")    gist_urls = []    files = []    for item in output:        if "raw_url" in item:            gist_urls.append(str(item[11:-1]))        if "filename" in item:            files.append(str(item.split(":")[1][2:-1]))    return [gist_urls, files]  def write_gist(filename, text):     #Writes text(gist) to filename      fp = open(filename, 'w')     fp.write(text)     fp.close()  def download(permission, user, request, fileno):     #Loads and writes all the gists to <em>dirname</em>      if(permission == "yes" or permission == "no"):         gist_urls, files = load(request)         dirname = user+"'s_gists/"         create_directory(dirname)         if(fileno[1] == "all"):             for i in range(len(gist_urls)):                 gist = requests.get(gist_urls[i])                 write_gist(dirname+files[i], gist.text)         else:             for i in range(1,len(fileno)):                 gist = requests.get(gist_urls[int(fileno[i])])                 write_gist(dirname+files[int(fileno[i])], gist.text)  def detailed(urls, pos):     #Prints out the contents of a file      gist = requests.get(urls[int(pos)])     print(gist.text)  def main():     #Authenticates and downloads gists according to user's choice     #Commands:     #show: To show all the available gists with their assigned gistno     #download all: To download all the available gists     #download gistno(s): To download gist(s) assigned to gistno(s)     #detailed gistno: To print content of gist assigned to gistno     #exit: To exit the script      ask_auth, user, request = auth()     urls, files = load(request)     try:         while(1):             command = input("Enter your command: ")             if("download" in command):                 download(ask_auth, user, request, command.split(" "))             elif("detailed" in command):                 detailed(urls, command.split(" ")[1])             elif(command == "show"):                 show(files)             elif(command == "exit"):                 return     except:         pass  if(__name__ == '__main__'):     main()

Explanation GithubGist API stores information about each user at http://api.github.com/users/username/gists.

Send a HTTP request to the above url to retrieve information about the user.
Search for the raw_url of every available gist and sent HTTP requests to retrieve the information about them.
Manipulated the information to your needs.

Downloading gists from Github made simple

Sri Sanketh Uppalapati

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Article Tags :

python

Practice Tags :

python

Downloading gists from Github made simple

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