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a.mosallaei
Asked: 2019-08-02 12:13:37 +0800 CST

How can I add an SSH key to Gitlab through a bash executable?

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I am creating a bash executable, which creates an SSH key, and uploads it to a user's Gitlab account. I am aware of how to create the SSH key via the bash executable:

ssh-keygen -o -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa

and I also know how to retrieve from it, however I don't know how to upload it to a user's Gitlab account.

I have found multiple documentations for uploading a user's SSH to Github however not Gitlab (I assume mostly similar...?). So I would use this for Github

curl -u "USERNAME:PASSWORD" --data "{\"title\": \"TITLE\", \"key\": \"$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)\"}" https://api.github.com/user/keys

and I would make USERNAME, PASSWORD, and TITLE input fields for the user to customize.

I want to say that it would be as simple for Gitlab (I found POST /users/:id/keys on their API site, but don't know how to implement it as a curl command), but I don't know how closely related Gitlab and Github are.

command-line ssh bash git gitlab

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The first problem you need to solve when using the Gitlab REST API is the authentification, nicely explained in the docs here. I use a personal access token in this post which creation is explained here, but for you with a script authenticating as a specific user an Impersonation token (see here for the creation) may be better suited.

    To add an ssh key I need:

    POST /user/keys

    To send data (and subsequently use the POST method) curl provides the -d option, required fields are title and key. As the default header is Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded but the API expects json I have to specify that using the -H option:

    $ curl -d '{"title":"test key","key":"'"$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)"'"}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' https://gitlab.com/api/v4/user/keys?private_token=<my_access_token>
{"id":3889765,"title":"test key","key":"ssh-rsa <my_ssh_key>","created_at":"2019-08-01T21:26:40.952Z"}

    Now to test the change I just list my ssh keys. The docs say I have to use GET /user/keys, as GET is curl’s default method I just do:

    $ curl https://gitlab.com/api/v4/user/keys?private_token=<my_access_token>
[{"id":3889765,"title":"test key","key":"ssh-rsa <my_ssh_key>","created_at":"2019-08-01T21:26:40.952Z"}]

    I did this just for testing, so I’m going to delete the key with DELETE /user/keys/:key_id – note that :key_id needs to be substituted by the id of the key to delete:

    $ curl -X DELETE https://gitlab.com/api/v4/user/keys/3889765?private_token=<my_access_token>

    Here’s a nice article about curl and the common REST methods.

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