Creating a fork with the GitHub V3 API (REST) - api

Question

I'm trying to fork a repo using the GitHub V3 API via REST, however, I am having issues making a POST request as per the docs (https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/forks/#create-a-fork).
Basically, what I have so far:
A logged-in user with an OAuth Token
A POST request setup to the API (URL: https://api.github.com/repos/carmichaelalonso/infiniteflight/forks/) - I am testing this with hurl.it to begin with.
Headers in the request: one has the name Authorization with the value 'token ...', the other specifies Content-Type with the value application/json
A body with the following JSON: {"organization" : "shortlisthome"} (shortlisthome is the account I am trying to fork the repo to.
I am not intending to fork this to an organization, instead of a standard user account, which is where I am getting confused. When I run the request, I do not get any authentication errors or 404 errors (I previously had but I had been entering incorrect values by mistake, causing such errors).
When I run this request though, I get the following result (a 422 unprocessable request):
{
"message": "Validation Failed",
"documentation_url": "---url-to-docs---",
"errors": [
{
"resource": "Fork",
"code": "invalid",
"field": "organization"
}
]
}
I am unsure whether or not I am able to fork this to a standard user, or if it is an error with my request. Please let me know if I can provide any more info (first post here so a bit unfamiliar with the convention).
Thanks!

Answer 1

In order for shortlisthome to fork the repository you need to authenticate as them. The repository you're trying to fork is public, so all you need to do is obtain a OAuth token for shortlisthome and then make a similar request to the one you're making now. The only difference will be that you do not need to provide the JSON body of {"organization": "shortlisthome"}.
For what it is worth, the optional JSON body is intended for you to use when you are a member of an organization with proper permissions and you want to fork the repository to that organization. You cannot fork a repository to someone else's account unless you are authenticated as them.

Answer 2

I've so far avoided OAuth2, and do not know hurl. Yet, perhaps this can help.
This post shows how it can be done using cURL's -u username flag:
curl -u 'myusername' https://api.github.com/repos/carmichaelalonso/infiniteflight/forks/ -d ''
The -d (or alternatively --data) flag turns it into a POST request.
Without that flag cURL defaults to a GET request, which is not what you want.
Since, the data is part of the URI for this request, send an empty string for the data that must follow the -d param, as such: -d ''.
Of course, using -u will require you to also supply a password..
Here is what GitHub shows using OAuth2 with their API:
OAuth2 Token (sent in a header):
curl -H "Authorization: token OAUTH-TOKEN" https://api.github.com
OAuth2 Token (sent as a parameter):
curl https://api.github.com/?access_token=OAUTH-TOKEN
Read more about OAuth2. Note that OAuth2 tokens can be acquired programmatically, for applications that are not websites.
OAuth2 Key/Secret
curl 'https://api.github.com/users/whatever?client_id=xxxx&client_secret=yyyy'
I suspect that adding -d '' (or some equivalent in hurl),
plus one of the formats above for sending OAuth2 info might get you most of the way there.

Answer 3

I used this command to fork on github enterprise
curl -vX POST https://git.redacted.com/api/v3/repos/<org-to-fork-from>/<repo-to-fork>/forks?access_token=<api-token> -d #gh-fork.json --header "Content-Type: application/json"
gh-fork.json is just
{
"organization": "org-to-fork-to",
"description": "",
"homepage": "https://git.redacted.com",
"private": false
}