Using Git from Python
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

is a python api for your git repos, it can be quite handy when you need to work with git from python.

Date: April 30, 2022

GitPython is a python api for your git </glossary/git/> repos, it can be quite handy when you need to work with git from python.

Use Case
────────

I recently made myself a handy tool for making screenshots in python and it need to do a git commit and push from within the script. For this I reached for GitPython.

How I Quickly Capture Screenshots directly into My Blog </screenshot-to-blog/>

Installation
────────────

GitPython is a python library hosted on pypi that we will want to install into our virtual environments using pip.

```
pip install GitPython
```

Create a Repo Object
────────────────────

Import Repo from the git library and create an instance of the Repo object by giving it a path to the directory containing your .git directory.

```
from git import Repo
repo = Repo('~/git/waylonwalker.com/')
```

Two interfaces
──────────────

from the docs

│ It provides abstractions of git objects for easy access of repository data, and additionally allows you to access the git repository more directly using either a pure python implementation, or the faster, but more resource intensive git command implementation.

I only needed to use the more intensive but familar to me git command implementation to get me project off the ground. There is a good tutorial <https://gitpython.readthedocs.io/en/stable/tutorial.html#tutorial-label> to get you started with their pure python implementation in their docs.

Status
──────

Requesting the git status can be done as follows.

│ note I have prefixed my commands with »> to distinguish between the command I entered and the output.

```
>>> print(repo.git.status())

On branch main
Your branch is ahead of 'origin/main' by 1 commit.
  (use "git push" to publish your local commits)

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
        blog/
```

You can even pass in flags that you would pass into the cli.

```
>>> print(repo.git.status("-s"))
?? blog/
```

log
───

Example of using the log.

```
print(repo.git.log('--oneline', '--graph'))

* 0d28bd8 fix broken image link
* 3573928 wip screenshot-to-blog
* fed9abc wip screenshot-to-blog
* d383780 update for wsl2
* ad72b14 wip screenshot-to-blog
* 144c2f3 gratitude-180
```

Find Deleted Files
──────────────────

We can even do things like find all files that have been deleted and the hash they were deleted.

```
print(repo.git.log('--diff-filter', 'D', '--name-only', '--pretty=format:"%h"'))
```

git find deleted files </git-find-deleted-files/>

│ full post on finding deleted files

My Experience
─────────────

This library seemed pretty straightforward and predicatable once I realized there were two main implementations and that I would already be familar with the more intensive git command implementation.