Allow issue/comment attachments through API

[ShahimEssaid]

The web interface allows for creating attachments with a drag and drop and then embedding the URL in the comment. However, there is no way to do the same through the API.

One example where this would be useful is with the Eclipse IDE and its EGit/Mylyn tooling where an issue can be accessed in Eclipse and where it would be possible to attach a "Mylyn context" to a comment to capture the working context (in the IDE, i.e. which files are open, where to focus, etc.) that is related to the comment or issue. This is a very nice feature but without the ability to attach these context files the contexts can't be shared with other users. See https://wiki.eclipse.org/Mylyn/User_Guide#Task-Focused_Interface for more details.

[dahall]

This becomes even more important when migrating from other repositories. For example, recently CodePlex shutdown and recommended that its users migrate to GitHub. As part of the migration, it would have been ideal to keep the attachments to issues, especially screen shots that help to identify the issue or the fix.

[StrikeNP]

+1
Here are Larson Research Group we are also trying to migrate our systems. Transitioning from a SVN-Trac-TWiki combo, it'd be nice to have everything in one place... including the 20 years of ticket (issues) comment attachments.

Update: I contacted GitHub Support about the issue, below is their reply

Dear Nicolas,

Thanks for reaching out. You're not missing anything -- the ability to add issue attachments is not exposed via the GitHub API currently. It's something we might add in the future, but I can't say when it might happen (I'm not aware of any near-term plans to add this to the API).

I wish I had better news for you, but I don't. If there's anything else you'd like to see improved -- please let us know.

Best,
GitHub Staff

[adamfowleruk]

+1 This is a big oversight in the API. You cannot create tightly bound tools to GitHub without this level of integration. I'm having to attach a log file in my tool, so for now I'll just have to paste it in the description!!!

[ataraxie]

I'm using Github issues for teaching a university software engineering course where I provide grades to students through issues. I'm currently manually adding exam exports to all (REST-generated) issues by hand 😞

VOTE!

[TheHarold]

This feature is not available yet as per GitHub support.

[MJafarMashhadi]

That's why this issue is still open

[jmarshall]

Confirmation once again from GitHub Support that this API capability is not implemented, along with this tidbit:

If it is not possible [to do this via the API], what is the reason for disallowing it?

As I understand this functionality is currently being looked into. I think it's taking this long because allowing attachments and images to be uploaded programmatically would potentially vastly increase the amount of content uploaded to GitHub, and we would only want that if we were confident our moderation tooling would be able to keep pace.

The obvious and expected answer to this question, but also a copout. Nefarious folks will just have to think of some other way of programmatically uploading files and images to a remote Git repository…