Trouble in Creating a new branch with Bitbucket cloud apis? I get Missing URL error everytime

Question

I used
curl https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/{username}/{repo_slug}/refs/branches \ -s --user {username}:{password} -g -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "name" : "TestBranch010", "target" : { "hash" : "default", } }'

to create a branch. But the following curl command executed via gitbash it says:

curl: (3) URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL
curl: (3) URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL
curl: (3) URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL

But the URL you guys mentioned in https://developer.atlassian.com/bitbucket/api/2/reference/resource/repositories/%7Busername%7D/%7Brepo_slug%7D/refs/branches is used similar as the one mentioned above. Apparently what URL would be the opt one used to create a branch using bitbucket cloud api.

Daniil Penkin · Answer

The target.hash parameter specifies where to create the new branch. It could be anything that identifies an existing commit in your repository: it can be a hash of that commit, a branch name (then its tip commit will be used) or a tag name (the commit it is pointing to will be used).

So the key thing here is that the commit target.hash refers to should exist. In my example repository I have a branch called master – this is why my requests work fine.

I need to mention hash: a1b2c3d4e5 in the target as the hash value is same for all branches in the repo.

I didn't really get what you mean by "hash value is same for all branches". Hash is an identifier of a commit, and all commits inside a repository have different hashes.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers,
Daniil

shivaram · Answer

Unless and until I mentioned the hash value, I could not create branch. For example

I need to mention hash: a1b2c3d4e5 in the target as the hash value is same for all branches in the repo.

how could you create a branch putting "hash":"master" ??

Daniil Penkin · Answer

Hello @shivaram,

Thanks for reaching out.

I think the quotes around the URL should fix the problem you're facing with curl.

You're right, the endpoint you referred to is meant to create a branch. For instance, this works in my repository:

curl -X POST -u dpenkin:password "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/dpenkin/test-repo/refs/branches" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '
{
  "name": "new_branch_demo",
  "target": {
    "hash": "master"
  }
}'

Note that if you need to use UUIDs instead of username or repository name, you need to put them in curly brackets (URL encoded as %7B and %7D). This is an equivalent to the previous call:

curl -X POST -u dpenkin:password "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/{c28ad334-3dd3-48cc-b19b-ee0427cf3754}/{06dc7f1b-1102-47fe-baa9-5d1e251593ef}/refs/branches" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '
{
  "name": "new_branch_demo",
  "target": {
    "hash": "master"
  }
}'

Upd: I noticed you're using -g option for curl. In this case you can leave the curlies as-is, they'll be encoded automatically:

curl -X POST -u dpenkin:password -g "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/{c28ad334-3dd3-48cc-b19b-ee0427cf3754}/{06dc7f1b-1102-47fe-baa9-5d1e251593ef}/refs/branches" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '
{
  "name": "new_branch_demo",
  "target": {
    "hash": "master"
  }
}'

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Daniil