Github Rest API returns 404 when I try to download a tarball for the repo

Question

When I try to download the tarball from the rest API I'm getting,

{
  "message": "Not Found",
  "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest/repos/contents#download-a-repository-archive-tar",
  "status": "404"
}

How can I resolve this?

Answer 1

In my case this was because I didn't have repo permissions granted (article on 404) on my Github Classic PAT. Getting a 404 on an API end point that exists is how GitHub handles any end-point they don't want you to know exists, prior to authorizing. When I've updated that to add the "repo" permission I got a status code 403 Forbidden.

Note the repo permission is greater than the combined repo:status repo_deployment public_repo repo:invite security_events. Even if all of the checkboxes under repo are selected, you'll still get a 404.

Don't forget if using GitHub Enterprise you must authorize your token on the respective project.

For more information see Troubleshooting the REST API