RepositoryFile update content, how?

[Spenhouet]

I want to update the content of a file in the repository.

I tried the official API command with postman:

PUT /projects/:id/repository/files/:file_path?branch=master
                                                &author_email=author%40example.com
                                                &content=some%20other%20content
                                                &commit_message=update%20file

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/repository_files.html

and that works perfectly.

With this I can just input the new file content as urlencoded string with

content=new%20content

I tried to update the content of a file in the repository with the updateFile method from the RepositoryFileAPI.

For that I retrieved the existing README file content with

repositoryFileApi.getOptionalFile(...).getContent()

but that doesn't give the expected output.
I guess I have to use repositoryFileApi.getRawFile() for that.

But how to set the new content?

I tried with repositoryFile.setContent(newContent) followed by updateFile but the new file content in the repository is not readable. Just looks like random symbols and is way to short. My first thought was that it is a encoding issue but I'm not sure if setting repositoryFile.content even is the right thing to do in the first place since getContent already didn't return the raw document content.

Is there a easy way to just do the above PUT from the official documentation to update the content of a repository file?

[gmessner]

@Spenhouet
The example provided by GitLab is not a good example. It is not a good idea to be passing the content in as a query param, it should be included in the body of the request.

When you set the content as a plain text String before calling updateFile() you must also set the encoding to "text" as follows: file.setEncoding("text")

When you fetch the RepositoryFile instance using getOptionalFile(...) or getFile(...) the content is Base64 encoded so you'll need to do the following to decode it:

RepositoryFile file = gitLabApi.getRepositoryFileApi().getFile("file-path", projectID, "master");   
byte[] fileContents = java.util.Base64.getDecoder().decode(file.getContent());

I have added some convenience methods to RepositoryFile to simplify all the above:

public String getDecodedContentAsString()
public byte[] getDecodedContentAsBytes()
public void encodeAndSetContent(String content)
public void encodeAndSetContent(byte[] byteContent)

[jgoldhammer]

I guess the commit api works better in this case to upload files...

[gmessner]

With the new convenience methods, the RepositoryFileApi makes this pretty straight forward. Would work like this:

RepositoryFile file = gitLabApi.getRepositoryFileApi().getFile(projectId, filePath, "master");
String content = file.getDecodedContentAsString();
content += "\nThis is a new line of content.";
file.encodeAndSetContent(content);
gitLabApi.getRepositoryFileApi().updateFile(file, projectId, "master", "Testing updateFile().");

[gmessner]

@Spenhouet
If the new convenience methods work as desired, can you please test and close this issue?

[Spenhouet]

@gmessner Yes, it works as expected. Nice addition and quality of life improvement.