Upload a file to a Gist with bash

Here is a solution that works for me on Bash/Dash to create anonymous gist (very probably not bullet-proof):

# 0. Your file nameFNAME=some.file# 1. Somehow sanitize the file content#    Remove \r (from Windows end-of-lines),#    Replace tabs by \t#    Replace " by \"#    Replace EOL by \nCONTENT=$(sed -e 's/\r//' -e's/\t/\\t/g' -e 's/"/\\"/g' "${FNAME}" | awk '{ printf($0 "\\n") }')# 2. Build the JSON requestread -r -d '' DESC <<EOF{  "description": "some description",  "public": true,  "files": {    "${FNAME}": {      "content": "${CONTENT}"    }  }}EOF# 3. Use curl to send a POST requestcurl -X POST -d "${DESC}" "https://api.github.com/gists"

If you need to create a gist associated with your github account, (for basic authentication) replace the last line by:

curl -u "${GITHUB_USERNAME}" -X POST -d "${DESC}" "https://api.github.com/gists"

For more advanced authentification schemes, please see https://developer.github.com/v3/#authentication

A command line tool implemented in Python:

pip install python-gistgist create "example description" foo.txt bar.txt

See https://github.com/jdowner/gist

If you prefer a Ruby gem, see https://github.com/defunkt/gist

Building on the answer of Sylvain Leroux, we can replace the sanitization and json building steps by making use of the jq command line tool:

$ jq -Rs '{"description": "some description", "public": true, "files": {"'$FNAME'": {"content": .}}}' $FNAME | curl -X POST -d @- "https://api.github.com/gists"

Or, with authentication:

$ jq -Rs '{"description": "some description", "public": true, "files": {"'$FNAME'": {"content": .}}}' $FNAME | curl -u "${GITHUB_USERNAME}" -X POST -d @- "https://api.github.com/gists"