GitHub is one of the largest developer resources, and an absolute must-know for aspiring web developers to explore and share projects online.
If you’re just starting out with git and GitHub, taking open-source code from GitHub to experiment with or add to your own projects is one great way to learn or develop your own apps. You can even connect your GitHub repository to your preferred hosting to deploy and test your apps. To do that, you’ll need to learn the basics: getting a file from GitHub onto your computer.
In this post, we’ll show you how to download different resources from GitHub. We’ll cover:
Let’s get started.
How to Download a File From GitHub
To download a single file from GitHub, follow these steps:
1. Navigate to the GitHub repository page that contains the file. If it’s a public repository, you can visit the page without logging in. If it’s a private repository, you’ll need to log in and have the proper permissions to access it.
2. From the main repository page, locate the file you want to download. You can do this by navigating the folders, or by clicking Go to File near the top of the page. This opens a list of all files in the repository that you can search.
3. Click the file you want to download. This will open the file in GitHub.
4. On the file page, click the Raw button. This opens the raw code in your browser.
5. Right-click the page and select Save as…, then name the file and choose where to save it on your device.
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How to Download a GitHub Repository
GitHub is made up of repositories. A repository is a place where all files in a project can be stored, accessed, tracked, and modified. To download a repository, follow these steps:
1. Navigate to the GitHub repository page. If it’s a public repository, you can visit the page without logging in. If it’s a private repository, you’ll need to log in and have the proper permissions to access it.
2. On the main repository page, click the green Code button.
3. In the menu that appears, click Download ZIP. The entire repository will be downloaded to your device as a zipped file.
With that, you should be able to open the file locally.
How to Download a Release From GitHub
Repositories may also put out releases, which are packaged versions of the project. To download a release:
1. Navigate to the GitHub repository page. If it’s a public repository, you can visit the page without logging in. If it’s a private repository, you’ll need to log in and have the proper permissions to access it.
2. Click Releases, located on the right-side panel.
3. You’ll be brought to a page listing releases from newest to oldest. Under the release that you want to download, locate the Assets section. Click a file under this section to download it.
You’ll be able to open this zipped file on your local device.
How to Download Multiple Files From GitHub
Unless you want to download an entire repository or release, there’s currently no way to bulk-download multiple files from GitHub. Depending on how many files you need from a repository, it may be best to download each individual file you need, or download the entire repository/release and delete the files you don’t need.
Get files from GitHub.
There’s a lot to learn when it comes to using GitHub — the platform packs a ton of features, and it can seem intimidating to newcomers. However, GitHub does an excellent job of making its tools simple and accessible. Case in point: downloading a single file or an entire repository is possible with just a few clicks.
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Free code snippet templates for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript -- Plus access to GitHub.
-
Navigation Menus & Breadcrumbs Templates
-
Button Transition Templates
-
CSS Effects Templates
-
And more!
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Git does not support downloading parts of the repository. You have to download all of it. But you should be able to do this with GitHub.
When you view a file it has a link to the "raw" version. The URL is constructed like so
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/user/repository/branch/filename
By filling in the blanks in the URL, you can use Wget or cURL (with the -L option, see below) or whatever to download a single file. Again, you won't get any of the nice version control features used by Git by doing this.
Update: I noticed you mention this doesn't work for binary files. You probably shouldn't use binary files in your Git repository, but GitHub has a download section for each repository that you can use to upload files. If you need more than one binary, you can use a .zip file.
The URL to download an uploaded file is:
https://github.com/downloads/user/repository/filename
Note that the URLs given above, from the links on github.com, will redirect to raw.githubusercontent.com. You should not directly use the URL given by this HTTP 302 redirect because, per RFC 2616: "Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests."