Call the GitHub REST API with gh api: fields, methods, headers, pagination, and jq filtering
domain: cli.github.com · 6 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Basic call: gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/releases — the {owner}, {repo}, {branch} placeholders in the endpoint are populated from the current repository
Add string params with -f/--raw-field key=value; add typed params with -F/--field key=value (magic conversion: true/false/null and integers become JSON types; @path or @- reads the value from a file or stdin; {owner}/{repo}/{branch} in values get populated)
Adding any parameters automatically switches the request to POST — pass --method GET explicitly to keep them as query-string params (e.g. for search endpoints)
Override the method with -X/--method PATCH|PUT|DELETE; add headers with -H 'Key: value'; send a raw body from a file or stdin with --input file (fields then go to the query string)
Fetch every page with --paginate; add --slurp to wrap all pages into one JSON array; extract data with -q/--jq '<expression>'
Docs: https://cli.github.com/manual/gh_api (verified against gh 2.97.0, released 2026-07-31)
Known gotchas
-f treats every value as a literal string; only -F does type conversion — sending -f per_page=100 to an endpoint expecting an integer still works as a query param, but JSON body booleans/numbers need -F
Forgetting --method GET on a read endpoint while passing -f/-F silently turns the request into a POST and typically returns 404/422
Value-side placeholder population ({owner} etc.) is part of -F magic conversion — -f leaves them as literal text
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