Get file or directory contents

This endpoints is used to retrieve the contents of a single file, or the contents of a directory at a specified revision.

Raw file contents

When path points to a file, this endpoint returns the raw contents. The response's Content-Type is derived from the filename extension (not from the contents). The file contents are not processed and no character encoding/recoding is performed and as a result no character encoding is included as part of the Content-Type.

The Content-Disposition header will be "attachment" to prevent browsers from running executable files.

If the file is managed by LFS, then a 301 redirect pointing to Atlassian's media services platform is returned.

The response includes an ETag that is based on the contents of the file and its attributes. This means that an empty __init__.py always returns the same ETag, regardless on the directory it lives in, or the commit it is on.

File meta data

When the request for a file path includes the query parameter ?format=meta, instead of returning the file's raw contents, Bitbucket instead returns the JSON object describing the file's properties:

$ curl https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/src/eefd5ef/tests/__init__.py?format=meta
{
  "links": {
    "self": {
      "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/src/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335/tests/__init__.py"
    },
    "meta": {
      "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/src/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335/tests/__init__.py?format=meta"
    }
  },
  "path": "tests/__init__.py",
  "commit": {
    "type": "commit",
    "hash": "eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335",
    "links": {
      "self": {
        "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/commit/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335"
      },
      "html": {
        "href": "https://bitbucket.org/atlassian/bbql/commits/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335"
      }
    }
  },
  "attributes": [],
  "type": "commit_file",
  "size": 0
}

File objects contain an attributes element that contains a list of possible modifiers. Currently defined values are:

• link -- indicates that the entry is a symbolic link. The contents of the file represent the path the link points to.
• executable -- indicates that the file has the executable bit set.
• subrepository -- indicates that the entry points to a submodule or subrepo. The contents of the file is the SHA1 of the repository pointed to.
• binary -- indicates whether Bitbucket thinks the file is binary.

This endpoint can provide an alternative to how a HEAD request can be used to check for the existence of a file, or a file's size without incurring the overhead of receiving its full contents.

Directory listings

When path points to a directory instead of a file, the response is a paginated list of directory and file objects in the same order as the underlying SCM system would return them.

For example:

$ curl https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/src/eefd5ef/tests
{
  "pagelen": 10,
  "values": [
    {
      "path": "tests/test_project",
      "type": "commit_directory",
      "links": {
        "self": {
          "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/src/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335/tests/test_project/"
        },
        "meta": {
          "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/src/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335/tests/test_project/?format=meta"
        }
      },
      "commit": {
        "type": "commit",
        "hash": "eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335",
        "links": {
          "self": {
            "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/commit/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335"
          },
          "html": {
            "href": "https://bitbucket.org/atlassian/bbql/commits/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335"
          }
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "links": {
        "self": {
          "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/src/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335/tests/__init__.py"
        },
        "meta": {
          "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/src/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335/tests/__init__.py?format=meta"
        }
      },
      "path": "tests/__init__.py",
      "commit": {
        "type": "commit",
        "hash": "eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335",
        "links": {
          "self": {
            "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/commit/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335"
          },
          "html": {
            "href": "https://bitbucket.org/atlassian/bbql/commits/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335"
          }
        }
      },
      "attributes": [],
      "type": "commit_file",
      "size": 0
    }
  ],
  "page": 1,
  "size": 2
}

When listing the contents of the repo's root directory, the use of a trailing slash at the end of the URL is required.

The response by default is not recursive, meaning that only the direct contents of a path are returned. The response does not recurse down into subdirectories. In order to "walk" the entire directory tree, the client can either parse each response and follow the self links of each commit_directory object, or can specify a max_depth to recurse to.

The max_depth parameter will do a breadth-first search to return the contents of the subdirectories up to the depth specified. Breadth-first search was chosen as it leads to the least amount of file system operations for git. If the max_depth parameter is specified to be too large, the call will time out and return a 555.

Each returned object is either a commit_file, or a commit_directory, both of which contain a path element. This path is the absolute path from the root of the repository. Each object also contains a commit object which embeds the commit the file is on. Note that this is merely the commit that was used in the URL. It is not the commit that last modified the file.

Directory objects have 2 representations. Their self link returns the paginated contents of the directory. The meta link on the other hand returns the actual directory object itself, e.g.:

{
  "path": "tests/test_project",
  "type": "commit_directory",
  "links": {
    "self": {
      "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/src/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335/tests/test_project/"
    },
    "meta": {
      "href": "https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/atlassian/bbql/src/eefd5ef5d3df01aed629f650959d6706d54cd335/tests/test_project/?format=meta"
    }
  },
  "commit": { ... }
}

Querying, filtering and sorting

Like most API endpoints, this API supports the Bitbucket querying/filtering syntax and so you could filter a directory listing to only include entries that match certain criteria. For instance, to list all binary files over 1kb use the expression:

size > 1024 and attributes = "binary"

which after urlencoding yields the query string:

?q=size%3E1024+and+attributes%3D%22binary%22

To change the ordering of the response, use the ?sort parameter:

.../src/eefd5ef/?sort=-size

See filtering and sorting for more details.