GitHub Gists

The github-backup tool can also be used to back up GitHub Gists. This is done using the github/gist backup type in your configuration file, along with an appropriate from directive to define the source of the gists you wish to back up.

Note

GitHub Gists don't have explicit "names" — instead, they are identified by a unique gist ID. While GitHub displays a filename as the Gist name in the UI, it's actually just the name of the first file in the Gist, which can change over time.

When backing up a Gist, the repository name will be based on the stable gist ID rather than a filename. This avoids issues where users rename files or add new ones, which could otherwise result in the same Gist being backed up multiple times under different names.

If you choose to back up GitHub Gists, be aware that the resulting repositories will be named using their gist ID rather than the more human-readable names shown on the GitHub website.

Examples

The following examples show how you can combine the kind and from directives to back up gists from GitHub.

Warning

Not every combination of kind and from is supported due to limitations in GitHub's API. If you use an unsupported combination, the tool will fail to run and provide an error message explaining why.

config.yaml
schedule: "0 * * * *"

backups:
    # Backup all of the gist accessible to the user associated with the provided credentials
  - kind: github/gist
    from: "user"
    to: /backups/github/gist
    credentials: !Token "your_github_pat"

    # Backup all of the public gist owned by the specified user
  - kind: github/gist
    from: "users/<username>"
    to: /backups/github/gist

Filter Fields

Regardless of which backup kind and source you choose, you may use the following fields in your filter to determine which gists should be included in your backup. These fields are accessed using the gist.<field> syntax, for example gist.public to determine if the gist is public or not.

Tips

These fields are also available when using github/repo or github/release backups.

Field	Type	Description
`gist.public`	`boolean`	Whether the gist is public
`gist.private`	`boolean`	Whether the gist is private
`gist.comments_enabled`	`boolean`	Whether comments are enabled for the gist
`gist.comments`	`integer`	Number of comments on the gist
`gist.files`	`integer`	Number of files in the gist
`gist.forks`	`integer`	The number of times this gist is forked
`gist.file_names`	`array`	List of file names in the gist
`gist.languages`	`array`	List of programming languages used in the gist
`gist.type`	`string`	MIME-Type of content in the gist