FAQ

General

I cannot edit the merge request / issue I’ve just retrieved.

It is likely that you used a MergeRequest, GroupMergeRequest, Issue or GroupIssue object. These objects cannot be edited. But you can create a new ProjectMergeRequest or ProjectIssue object to apply changes. For example:

issue = gl.issues.list()[0]
project = gl.projects.get(issue.project_id, lazy=True)
editable_issue = project.issues.get(issue.iid, lazy=True)
# you can now edit the object

See the merge requests example and the issues examples.

How can I clone the repository of a project?

python-gitlab does not provide an API to clone a project. You have to use a git library or call the git command.

The git URI is exposed in the ssh_url_to_repo attribute of Project objects.

Example:

import subprocess

project = gl.projects.create(data)  # or gl.projects.get(project_id)
print(project.attributes)  # displays all the attributes
git_url = project.ssh_url_to_repo
subprocess.call(['git', 'clone', git_url])

Not all items are returned from the API

If you’ve passed all=True (or --all via the CLI) to the API and still cannot see all items returned, use get_all=True (or --get-all via the CLI) instead. See Pagination for more details.

Common errors

AttributeError when accessing object attributes retrieved via list()

Fetching a list of objects does not always include all attributes in the objects. To retrieve an object with all attributes, use a get() call.

Example with projects:

for projects in gl.projects.list():
    # Retrieve project object with all attributes
    project = gl.projects.get(project.id)

AttributeError when accessing attributes after save() or refresh()

You are most likely trying to access an attribute that was not returned by the server on the second request. Please look at the documentation in Attributes in updated objects to see how to avoid this.

TypeError when accessing object attributes

When you encounter errors such as object is not iterable or object is not subscriptable when trying to access object attributes returned from the server, you are most likely trying to access an attribute that is shadowed by python-gitlab’s own methods or managers.

You can use the object’s attributes dictionary to access it directly instead. See the Gitlab Objects section for more details on how attributes are exposed.