How to get a file from specific commit hash using GitHub APIs?

Question

I'm looking for a way to read contents of file from a specific commit hash using the GitHub APIs. It’s written in the official documentation that the refs are commits/branch/tags to be used to get contents of a specific file from a specific commit. https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/contents/#get-contents

But the endpoint returns 404. I have the access token and authorization for the repository. The commit hash is also correct and I verified it with git log.

Is there a different solution for this?

Answer 1

You haven't shown us your code, so it's hard for us to say, but I've verified that this API endpoint does indeed work as expected. For example, I ran the following command against the git/git repository and got a response:

$ curl https://api.github.com/repos/git/git/contents/README.md?ref=274b9cc25322d9ee79aa8e6d4e86f0ffe5ced925

If you're seeing a 404, then either (a) the endpoint you're using doesn't exist, whether that's because you have the wrong repo, the wrong API URL, the wrong commit (and this needs to be a commit hash, not a tag hash), or something similar; or (b) your authentication is wrong. To check your authentication, you can try accessing https://api.github.com/user, which will return the current user iff you are properly authenticated.