The REST API is now versioned. For more information, see "About API versioning."

REST API endpoints for deployments

Use the REST API to create and delete deployments and deployment environments.

About deployments

Deployments are requests to deploy a specific ref (branch, SHA, tag). GitHub dispatches a deployment event that external services can listen for and act on when new deployments are created. Deployments enable developers and organizations to build loosely coupled tooling around deployments, without having to worry about the implementation details of delivering different types of applications (e.g., web, native).

Deployment statuses allow external services to mark deployments with an error, failure, pending, in_progress, queued, or success state that systems listening to deployment_status events can consume.

Deployment statuses can also include an optional description and log_url, which are highly recommended because they make deployment statuses more useful. The log_url is the full URL to the deployment output, and the description is a high-level summary of what happened with the deployment.

GitHub dispatches deployment and deployment_status events when new deployments and deployment statuses are created. These events allow third-party integrations to receive and respond to deployment requests, and update the status of a deployment as progress is made.

Below is a simple sequence diagram for how these interactions would work.

+---------+             +--------+            +-----------+        +-------------+
| Tooling |             | GitHub |            | 3rd Party |        | Your Server |
+---------+             +--------+            +-----------+        +-------------+
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |  Create Deployment   |                       |                     |
     |--------------------->|                       |                     |
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |  Deployment Created  |                       |                     |
     |<---------------------|                       |                     |
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |                      |   Deployment Event    |                     |
     |                      |---------------------->|                     |
     |                      |                       |     SSH+Deploys     |
     |                      |                       |-------------------->|
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |                      |   Deployment Status   |                     |
     |                      |<----------------------|                     |
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |                      |                       |   Deploy Completed  |
     |                      |                       |<--------------------|
     |                      |                       |                     |
     |                      |   Deployment Status   |                     |
     |                      |<----------------------|                     |
     |                      |                       |                     |

Keep in mind that GitHub is never actually accessing your servers. It's up to your third-party integration to interact with deployment events. Multiple systems can listen for deployment events, and it's up to each of those systems to decide whether they're responsible for pushing the code out to your servers, building native code, etc.

Note that the repo_deployment OAuth scope grants targeted access to deployments and deployment statuses without granting access to repository code, while the public_repo and repo scopes grant permission to code as well.

Inactive deployments

When you set the state of a deployment to success, then all prior non-transient, non-production environment deployments in the same repository with the same environment name will become inactive. To avoid this, you can set auto_inactive to false when creating the deployment status.

You can communicate that a transient environment no longer exists by setting its state to inactive. Setting the state to inactive shows the deployment as destroyed in GitHub and removes access to it.

List deployments

Simple filtering of deployments is available via query parameters:

Fine-grained access tokens for "List deployments"

This endpoint works with the following fine-grained token types:

The fine-grained token must have the following permission set:

"Deployments" repository permissions (read)

This endpoint can be used without authentication or the aforementioned permissions if only public resources are requested.

Parameters for "List deployments"

Headers
Name, Type, Description
`accept` string Setting to `application/vnd.github+json` is recommended.

Path parameters
Name, Type, Description
`owner` string Required The account owner of the repository. The name is not case sensitive.
`repo` string Required The name of the repository without the `.git` extension. The name is not case sensitive.

Query parameters
Name, Type, Description
`sha` string The SHA recorded at creation time. Default: `none`
`ref` string The name of the ref. This can be a branch, tag, or SHA. Default: `none`
`task` string The name of the task for the deployment (e.g., `deploy` or `deploy:migrations`). Default: `none`
`environment` string or null The name of the environment that was deployed to (e.g., `staging` or `production`). Default: `none`
`per_page` integer The number of results per page (max 100). For more information, see "Using pagination in the REST API." Default: `30`
`page` integer The page number of the results to fetch. For more information, see "Using pagination in the REST API." Default: `1`

HTTP response status codes for "List deployments"

Status code	Description
`200`	OK

Code samples for "List deployments"

Request example

get/repos/{owner}/{repo}/deployments

curl -L \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-TOKEN>" \
  -H "X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2022-11-28" \
  http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/repos/OWNER/REPO/deployments

Response

Status: 200

[
  {
    "url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example/deployments/1",
    "id": 1,
    "node_id": "MDEwOkRlcGxveW1lbnQx",
    "sha": "a84d88e7554fc1fa21bcbc4efae3c782a70d2b9d",
    "ref": "topic-branch",
    "task": "deploy",
    "payload": {},
    "original_environment": "staging",
    "environment": "production",
    "description": "Deploy request from hubot",
    "creator": {
      "login": "octocat",
      "id": 1,
      "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
      "avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
      "gravatar_id": "",
      "url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat",
      "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
      "followers_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/followers",
      "following_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
      "gists_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
      "starred_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
      "subscriptions_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/subscriptions",
      "organizations_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/orgs",
      "repos_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/repos",
      "events_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
      "received_events_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/received_events",
      "type": "User",
      "site_admin": false
    },
    "created_at": "2012-07-20T01:19:13Z",
    "updated_at": "2012-07-20T01:19:13Z",
    "statuses_url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example/deployments/1/statuses",
    "repository_url": "https://HOSTNAME/repos/octocat/example",
    "transient_environment": false,
    "production_environment": true
  }
]

Create a deployment

Deployments offer a few configurable parameters with certain defaults.

The ref parameter can be any named branch, tag, or SHA. At GitHub Enterprise Server we often deploy branches and verify them before we merge a pull request.

The environment parameter allows deployments to be issued to different runtime environments. Teams often have multiple environments for verifying their applications, such as production, staging, and qa. This parameter makes it easier to track which environments have requested deployments. The default environment is production.

The auto_merge parameter is used to ensure that the requested ref is not behind the repository's default branch. If the ref is behind the default branch for the repository, we will attempt to merge it for you. If the merge succeeds, the API will return a successful merge commit. If merge conflicts prevent the merge from succeeding, the API will return a failure response.

By default, commit statuses for every submitted context must be in a success state. The required_contexts parameter allows you to specify a subset of contexts that must be success, or to specify contexts that have not yet been submitted. You are not required to use commit statuses to deploy. If you do not require any contexts or create any commit statuses, the deployment will always succeed.

The payload parameter is available for any extra information that a deployment system might need. It is a JSON text field that will be passed on when a deployment event is dispatched.

The task parameter is used by the deployment system to allow different execution paths. In the web world this might be deploy:migrations to run schema changes on the system. In the compiled world this could be a flag to compile an application with debugging enabled.

Merged branch response: