git credential reads and/or writes (depending on the action used)
credential information in its standard input/output. This information
can correspond either to keys for which git credential will obtain
the login information (e.g. host, protocol, path), or to the actual
credential data to be obtained (username/password).
The credential is split into a set of named attributes, with one
attribute per line. Each attribute is specified by a key-value pair,
separated by an = (equals) sign, followed by a newline.
The key may contain any bytes except =, newline, or NUL. The value may
contain any bytes except newline or NUL.
Attributes with keys that end with C-style array brackets [] can have
multiple values. Each instance of a multi-valued attribute forms an
ordered list of values - the order of the repeated attributes defines
the order of the values. An empty multi-valued attribute (key[]=\n)
acts to clear any previous entries and reset the list.
In all cases, all bytes are treated as-is (i.e., there is no quoting,
and one cannot transmit a value with newline or NUL in it). The list of
attributes is terminated by a blank line or end-of-file.
Git understands the following attributes:
-
protocol
-
The protocol over which the credential will be used (e.g.,
https).
-
host
-
The remote hostname for a network credential. This includes
the port number if one was specified (e.g., "example.com:8088").
-
path
-
The path with which the credential will be used. E.g., for
accessing a remote https repository, this will be the
repository’s path on the server.
-
username
-
The credential’s username, if we already have one (e.g., from a
URL, the configuration, the user, or from a previously run helper).
-
password
-
The credential’s password, if we are asking it to be stored.
-
password_expiry_utc
-
Generated passwords such as an OAuth access token may have an expiry date.
When reading credentials from helpers, git credential fill ignores expired
passwords. Represented as Unix time UTC, seconds since 1970.
-
oauth_refresh_token
-
An OAuth refresh token may accompany a password that is an OAuth access
token. Helpers must treat this attribute as confidential like the password
attribute. Git itself has no special behaviour for this attribute.
-
url
-
When this special attribute is read by git credential, the
value is parsed as a URL and treated as if its constituent parts
were read (e.g., url=https://example.com would behave as if
protocol=https and host=example.com had been provided). This
can help callers avoid parsing URLs themselves.
Note that specifying a protocol is mandatory and if the URL
doesn’t specify a hostname (e.g., "cert:///path/to/file") the
credential will contain a hostname attribute whose value is an
empty string.
Components which are missing from the URL (e.g., there is no
username in the example above) will be left unset.
-
wwwauth[]
-
When an HTTP response is received by Git that includes one or more
WWW-Authenticate authentication headers, these will be passed by Git
to credential helpers.
Each WWW-Authenticate header value is passed as a multi-valued
attribute wwwauth[], where the order of the attributes is the same as
they appear in the HTTP response. This attribute is one-way from Git
to pass additional information to credential helpers.
Unrecognised attributes are silently discarded.