Github Gist client allowing for quick uploads via commandline!

Installing

Via pip:

pip3 install gistbin

Manually:

git clone https://github.com/chand1012/gistbin.git
cd gistbin
pip install .

View Source.

Using

Authentication

Because Gistbin uses the GitHub API, authentication is required. This requires a Github Personal Access Token, instructions of where to find and how to generate can be found here. To authenticate, simply run gistbin --login after installing and enter the prompted information. Here is an example:

octocat@octoserv:~$ gistbin --login
Enter GitHub username: octocat
Enter GitHub access token: ****************
Keyfile saved.
octocat@octoserv:~$ 

The key file is saved at $HOME/.gistbin/auth.json.

Usage

To use, simply pipe the file you want to upload into Gistbin like so:

octocat@octoserv:~$ cat hello_world.rb | gistbin
https://gist.github.com/octocat/6cad326836d38bd3a7ae

By default, the gist that you upload is given a random name and a .txt extension with a blank description. You can edit this later on the gist’s webpage, or you can also pass the --name and --desc to add a name and description respectively. You can also use the shortcut parameters, -n and -d.

octocat@octoserv:~$ cat test.cs | gistbin -n "test.cs"
https://gist.github.com/octocat/1305321

If you don’t want others to see your gist, and you just want it for your eyes only, you can pass --private or -p.

octocat@octoserv:~$ cat private.txt | gistbin -n "private.txt" -p
https://gist.github.com/octocat/thisissecret

If you want to get the raw url for the uploaded file, such as if you want to then download the file immediately onto another machine, you can pass the -r or --raw argument.

octocat@octoserv:~$ cat git-author-rewrite.sh | gistbin -n "git-author-rewrite.sh" -r
https://gist.githubusercontent.com/octocat/0831f3fbd83ac4d46451/raw/c197afe3e9ea2e4218f9fccbc0f36d2b8fd3c1e3/git-author-rewrite.sh

If you are on a platform that does not support piping in to STDIN, you can instead give GistBin a path to a file with the -f or --file command. This works with a single file or multiple files, but will not work with the --raw flag. This is also the only way to get GistBin working on Windows.

octocat@octoserv:~$ gistbin -f singleBrick.scad singleBrick.stl # this is an ASCII STL, GistBin does not work with binary files.
https://gist.github.com/chand1012/c8f4d8094d6e0b48c8e97e89a2530fad

You can also get the instructions for all of these commands with the help flag:

octocat@octoserv:~$ gistbin -h
usage: gistbin [-h] [-n NAME] [-v] [-d DESC] [--login] [-p] [-r]

A commandline tool for GitHub Gists.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -n NAME, --name NAME  Gives your gist a name. Input as a string. Default is
                        random.
  -v, --verbose         Enables verbose output.
  -d DESC, --desc DESC  Gives your gist a description. Input as a string.
  --login               Login to GitHub Gists.
  -p, --private         Sets your Gist to private so only those with the link
                        can see.
  -r, --raw             Makes Gistbin return the raw URL instead of the HTML
                        URL of the file.
  -f FILES [FILES ...], --file FILES [FILES ...]
                        Gives Gistbin a list of files to upload. Also works
                        with a single file.

Gistbin doesn’t just work with cat you can pipe any terminal output (that ends) into it! For example, if you wanted to list all the files in a directory, you could use ls -1 | gistbin -n "filelist.txt". If you wanted to get all the logs from yesterday from the journal, you could run journalctl --since yesterday | gistbin -n "yesterday-today-journal.log". The possibilities are endless!