content/blog/2021-07-15-delete-gitlab-repos.org

  1#+date:        <2021-07-15 Thu 00:00:00>
  2#+title:       Method to Remove All GitLab Repositories Through Automation
  3#+description: Stepwise instructions for executing a Python script to delete all repositories associated with a GitLab account. Includes authentication and error handling procedures.
  4#+slug:        delete-gitlab-repos
  5#+filetags:    :gitlab:python:script:
  6
  7* Background
  8
  9Have you ever used GitLab to host your source code, moved to a different
 10host, and wanted to delete everything from your GitLab account? Well,
 11this post covers any scenario where you would want to delete all
 12repositories from your GitLab account.
 13
 14For me, I currently maintain around 30 repositories and don't like to
 15manually delete them whenever I switch host. GitHub has a few different
 16tools online to delete all repositories for you, but I have not found
 17anything similar for GitLab, so I needed an alternative solution.
 18
 19* Use a Python Script
 20
 21** Requirements
 22
 23Before we look at the script, make sure you know your GitLab username.
 24Next, [[https://gitlab.com/-/profile/personal_access_tokens][create an
 25authorization token]] so that the Python script can delete your
 26repositories. Don't lose this token or else you'll need to create a new
 27one.
 28
 29** Create the Script
 30
 31To run a Python script, you must first create it. Open a terminal and
 32enter the following commands in whichever directory you prefer to store
 33the script. You can do the same things in a file manager if you prefer.
 34
 35#+begin_src sh
 36mkdir delete-gitlab
 37#+end_src
 38
 39#+begin_src sh
 40cd delete-gitlab
 41#+end_src
 42
 43#+begin_src sh
 44nano main.py
 45#+end_src
 46
 47Enter the following code into your =main.py= script.
 48
 49#+begin_src python
 50import request
 51import json
 52
 53
 54def get_project_ids():
 55    url = "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/users/{user-id}/projects"
 56
 57    querystring = {"owned": "true", "simple": "true", "per_page": "50"}
 58
 59    payload = ""
 60    headers = {'authorization': 'Bearer {auth-token}'}
 61
 62    response = requests.request("GET", url, data=payload, headers=headers, params=querystring)
 63
 64    projects = json.loads(response.text)
 65    projects_ids = list(map(lambda project: project.get('id'), projects))
 66
 67    return projects_ids
 68
 69
 70def remove_project(project_id):
 71    url_temp = "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/{project}"
 72    headers = {'authorization': 'Bearer {auth-token}'}
 73    querystring = ""
 74    payload = ""
 75
 76    url = url_temp.format(project=project_id)
 77
 78    response = requests.request("DELETE", url, data=payload, headers=headers, params=querystring)
 79    project = json.loads(response.text)
 80    print(project)
 81
 82
 83def main():
 84    projects_ids = get_project_ids()
 85
 86    url_temp = "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/{project}"
 87    headers = {'authorization': 'Bearer {auth-token}'}
 88    querystring = ""
 89    payload = ""
 90
 91    for project_id in projects_ids:
 92        url = url_temp.format(project=project_id)
 93
 94        response = requests.request("GET", url, data=payload, headers=headers, params=querystring)
 95        project = json.loads(response.text)
 96        print(str(project.get('id')) + " " + project.get('name'))
 97        print("Removing...")
 98        remove_project(project_id)
 99
100
101if __name__ == "__main__":
102    main()
103#+end_src
104
105Now that you have the proper information, replace ={user-id}= with your
106GitLab username and ={auth-token}= with the authorization token you
107created earlier.
108
109Finally, simply run the script and watch the output. You can also use
110PyCharm Community Edition to edit and run the Python script if you don't
111want to work in a terminal.
112
113#+begin_src sh
114python3 main.py
115#+end_src