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# GitLab API
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Automate GitLab via a simple and powerful API. All definitions can be found
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under [`/lib/api` ](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/tree/master/lib/api ).
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## Resources
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Documentation for various API resources can be found separately in the
following locations:
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- [Users ](users.md )
- [Session ](session.md )
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- [Projects ](projects.md ) including setting Webhooks
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- [Project Snippets ](project_snippets.md )
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- [Services ](services.md )
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- [Repositories ](repositories.md )
- [Repository Files ](repository_files.md )
- [Commits ](commits.md )
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- [Tags ](tags.md )
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- [Branches ](branches.md )
- [Merge Requests ](merge_requests.md )
- [Issues ](issues.md )
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- [Labels ](labels.md )
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- [Milestones ](milestones.md )
- [Notes ](notes.md ) (comments)
- [Deploy Keys ](deploy_keys.md )
- [System Hooks ](system_hooks.md )
- [Groups ](groups.md )
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- [Namespaces ](namespaces.md )
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- [Settings ](settings.md )
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- [Keys ](keys.md )
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- [Builds ](builds.md )
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- [Build triggers ](build_triggers.md )
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- [Build Variables ](build_variables.md )
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- [Runners ](runners.md )
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## Authentication
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All API requests require authentication. You need to pass a `private_token`
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parameter via query string or header. If passed as a header, the header name
must be `PRIVATE-TOKEN` (uppercase and with a dash instead of an underscore).
You can find or reset your private token in your account page (`/profile/account`).
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If `private_token` is invalid or omitted, then an error message will be
returned with status code `401` :
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```json
{
"message": "401 Unauthorized"
}
```
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API requests should be prefixed with `api` and the API version. The API version
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is defined in [`lib/api.rb`][lib-api-url].
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Example of a valid API request:
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```shell
GET https://gitlab.example.com/api/v3/projects?private_token=9koXpg98eAheJpvBs5tK
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```
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Example of a valid API request using cURL and authentication via header:
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```shell
curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: 9koXpg98eAheJpvBs5tK" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v3/projects"
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```
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The API uses JSON to serialize data. You don't need to specify `.json` at the
end of an API URL.
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## Authentication with OAuth2 token
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Instead of the `private_token` you can transmit the OAuth2 access token as a
header or as a parameter.
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Example of OAuth2 token as a parameter:
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```shell
curl https://gitlab.example.com/api/v3/user?access_token=OAUTH-TOKEN
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```
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Example of OAuth2 token as a header:
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```shell
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer OAUTH-TOKEN" https://example.com/api/v3/user
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```
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Read more about [GitLab as an OAuth2 client ](oauth2.md ).
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## Status codes
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The API is designed to return different status codes according to context and
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action. This way, if a request results in an error, the caller is able to get
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insight into what went wrong.
The following table gives an overview of how the API functions generally behave.
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| Request type | Description |
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| ------------ | ----------- |
| `GET` | Access one or more resources and return the result as JSON. |
| `POST` | Return `201 Created` if the resource is successfully created and return the newly created resource as JSON. |
| `GET` / `PUT` / `DELETE` | Return `200 OK` if the resource is accessed, modified or deleted successfully. The (modified) result is returned as JSON. |
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| `DELETE` | Designed to be idempotent, meaning a request to a resource still returns `200 OK` even it was deleted before or is not available. The reasoning behind this, is that the user is not really interested if the resource existed before or not. |
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The following table shows the possible return codes for API requests.
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| Return values | Description |
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| ------------- | ----------- |
| `200 OK` | The `GET` , `PUT` or `DELETE` request was successful, the resource(s) itself is returned as JSON. |
| `201 Created` | The `POST` request was successful and the resource is returned as JSON. |
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| `304 Not Modified` | Indicates that the resource has not been modified since the last request. |
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| `400 Bad Request` | A required attribute of the API request is missing, e.g., the title of an issue is not given. |
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| `401 Unauthorized` | The user is not authenticated, a valid [user token ](#authentication ) is necessary. |
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| `403 Forbidden` | The request is not allowed, e.g., the user is not allowed to delete a project. |
| `404 Not Found` | A resource could not be accessed, e.g., an ID for a resource could not be found. |
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| `405 Method Not Allowed` | The request is not supported. |
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| `409 Conflict` | A conflicting resource already exists, e.g., creating a project with a name that already exists. |
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| `422 Unprocessable` | The entity could not be processed. |
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| `500 Server Error` | While handling the request something went wrong server-side. |
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## Sudo
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All API requests support performing an API call as if you were another user,
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provided your private token is from an administrator account. You need to pass
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the `sudo` parameter either via query string or a header with an ID/username of
the user you want to perform the operation as. If passed as a header, the
header name must be `SUDO` (uppercase).
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If a non administrative `private_token` is provided, then an error message will
be returned with status code `403` :
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```json
{
"message": "403 Forbidden: Must be admin to use sudo"
}
```
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If the sudo user ID or username cannot be found, an error message will be
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returned with status code `404` :
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```json
{
"message": "404 Not Found: No user id or username for: < id / username > "
}
```
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---
Example of a valid API call and a request using cURL with sudo request,
providing a username:
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```shell
GET /projects?private_token=9koXpg98eAheJpvBs5tK& sudo=username
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```
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```shell
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curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: 9koXpg98eAheJpvBs5tK" --header "SUDO: username" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v3/projects"
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```
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Example of a valid API call and a request using cURL with sudo request,
providing an ID:
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```shell
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GET /projects?private_token=9koXpg98eAheJpvBs5tK& sudo=23
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```
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```shell
curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: 9koXpg98eAheJpvBs5tK" --header "SUDO: 23" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v3/projects"
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```
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## Pagination
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Sometimes the returned result will span across many pages. When listing
resources you can pass the following parameters:
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| Parameter | Description |
| --------- | ----------- |
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| `page` | Page number (default: `1` ) |
| `per_page` | Number of items to list per page (default: `20` , max: `100` ) |
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In the example below, we list 50 [namespaces ](namespaces.md ) per page.
```bash
curl -X PUT -H "PRIVATE-TOKEN: 9koXpg98eAheJpvBs5tK" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v3/namespaces?per_page=50
```
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### Pagination Link header
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[Link headers ](http://www.w3.org/wiki/LinkHeader ) are sent back with each
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response. They have `rel` set to prev/next/first/last and contain the relevant
URL. Please use these links instead of generating your own URLs.
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In the cURL example below, we limit the output to 3 items per page (`per_page=3`)
and we request the second page (`page=2`) of [comments ](notes.md ) of the issue
with ID `8` which belongs to the project with ID `8` :
```bash
curl -I -H "PRIVATE-TOKEN: 9koXpg98eAheJpvBs5tK" https://gitlab.example.com/api/v3/projects/8/issues/8/notes?per_page=3& page=2
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```
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The response will then be:
```
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Length: 1103
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2016 09:43:18 GMT
Link: < https: / / gitlab . example . com / api / v3 / projects / 8 / issues / 8 / notes ? page = 1&per_page=3 > ; rel="prev", < https: / / gitlab . example . com / api / v3 / projects / 8 / issues / 8 / notes ? page = 3&per_page=3 > ; rel="next", < https: / / gitlab . example . com / api / v3 / projects / 8 / issues / 8 / notes ? page = 1&per_page=3 > ; rel="first", < https: / / gitlab . example . com / api / v3 / projects / 8 / issues / 8 / notes ? page = 3&per_page=3 > ; rel="last"
Status: 200 OK
Vary: Origin
X-Next-Page: 3
X-Page: 2
X-Per-Page: 3
X-Prev-Page: 1
X-Request-Id: 732ad4ee-9870-4866-a199-a9db0cde3c86
X-Runtime: 0.108688
X-Total: 8
X-Total-Pages: 3
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```
### Other pagination headers
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Additional pagination headers are also sent back.
| Header | Description |
| ------ | ----------- |
| `X-Total` | The total number of items |
| `X-Total-Pages` | The total number of pages |
| `X-Per-Page` | The number of items per page |
| `X-Page` | The index of the current page (starting at 1) |
| `X-Next-Page` | The index of the next page |
| `X-Prev-Page` | The index of the previous page |
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## `id` vs `iid`
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When you work with the API, you may notice two similar fields in API entities:
`id` and `iid` . The main difference between them is scope.
For example, an issue might have `id: 46` and `iid: 5` .
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| Parameter | Description |
| --------- | ----------- |
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| `id` | Is unique across all issues and is used for any API call |
| `iid` | Is unique only in scope of a single project. When you browse issues or merge requests with the Web UI, you see the `iid` |
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That means that if you want to get an issue via the API you should use the `id` :
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```bash
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GET /projects/42/issues/:id
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```
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On the other hand, if you want to create a link to a web page you should use
the `iid` :
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```bash
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GET /projects/42/issues/:iid
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```
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## Data validation and error reporting
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When working with the API you may encounter validation errors, in which case
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the API will answer with an HTTP `400` status.
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Such errors appear in two cases:
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- A required attribute of the API request is missing, e.g., the title of an
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issue is not given
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- An attribute did not pass the validation, e.g., user bio is too long
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When an attribute is missing, you will get something like:
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```
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HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Content-Type: application/json
{
"message":"400 (Bad request) \"title\" not given"
}
```
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When a validation error occurs, error messages will be different. They will
hold all details of validation errors:
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```
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HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Content-Type: application/json
{
"message": {
"bio": [
"is too long (maximum is 255 characters)"
]
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}
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}
```
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This makes error messages more machine-readable. The format can be described as
follows:
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```json
{
"message": {
"< property-name > ": [
"< error-message > ",
"< error-message > ",
...
],
"< embed-entity > ": {
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"< property-name > ": [
"< error-message > ",
"< error-message > ",
...
],
}
}
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}
```
## Clients
There are many unofficial GitLab API Clients for most of the popular
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programming languages. Visit the [GitLab website] for a complete list.
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[GitLab website]: https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#api-clients "Clients using the GitLab API"
[lib-api-url]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/tree/master/lib/api/api.rb