Background

Have you ever used GitLab to host your source code, moved to a different host, and wanted to delete everything from your GitLab account? Well, this post covers any scenario where you would want to delete all repositories from your GitLab account.

For me, I currently maintain around 30 repositories and don't like to manually delete them whenever I switch host. GitHub has a few different tools online to delete all repositories for you, but I have not found anything similar for GitLab, so I needed an alternative solution.

Use a Python Script

Requirements

Before we look at the script, make sure you know your GitLab username. Next, create an authorization token so that the Python script can delete your repositories. Don't lose this token or else you'll need to create a new one.

Create the Script

To run a Python script, you must first create it. Open a terminal and enter the following commands in whichever directory you prefer to store the script. You can do the same things in a file manager if you prefer.

mkdir delete-gitlab

cd delete-gitlab

nano main.py

Enter the following code into your main.py script.

import request
import json


def get_project_ids():
    url = "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/users/{user-id}/projects"

    querystring = {"owned": "true", "simple": "true", "per_page": "50"}

    payload = ""
    headers = {'authorization': 'Bearer {auth-token}'}

    response = requests.request("GET", url, data=payload, headers=headers, params=querystring)

    projects = json.loads(response.text)
    projects_ids = list(map(lambda project: project.get('id'), projects))

    return projects_ids


def remove_project(project_id):
    url_temp = "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/{project}"
    headers = {'authorization': 'Bearer {auth-token}'}
    querystring = ""
    payload = ""

    url = url_temp.format(project=project_id)

    response = requests.request("DELETE", url, data=payload, headers=headers, params=querystring)
    project = json.loads(response.text)
    print(project)


def main():
    projects_ids = get_project_ids()

    url_temp = "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/{project}"
    headers = {'authorization': 'Bearer {auth-token}'}
    querystring = ""
    payload = ""

    for project_id in projects_ids:
        url = url_temp.format(project=project_id)

        response = requests.request("GET", url, data=payload, headers=headers, params=querystring)
        project = json.loads(response.text)
        print(str(project.get('id')) + " " + project.get('name'))
        print("Removing...")
        remove_project(project_id)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Now that you have the proper information, replace {user-id} with your GitLab username and {auth-token} with the authorization token you created earlier.

Finally, simply run the script and watch the output. You can also use PyCharm Community Edition to edit and run the Python script if you don't want to work in a terminal.

python3 main.py