Container registry API

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Use these API endpoints to work with the GitLab container registry.

You can authenticate with these endpoints from a CI/CD job by passing the $CI_JOB_TOKEN variable as the JOB-TOKEN header. The job token only has access to the container registry of the project that created the pipeline.

Change the visibility of the container registry

This controls who can view the container registry.

PUT /projects/:id/

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`id`	integer/string	yes	The ID or URL-encoded path of the project accessible by the authenticated user.
`container_registry_access_level`	string	no	The desired visibility of the container registry. One of `enabled` (default), `private`, or `disabled`.

Descriptions of the possible values for container_registry_access_level:

enabled (Default): The container registry is visible to everyone with access to the project. If the project is public, the container registry is also public. If the project is internal or private, the container registry is also internal or private.
private: The container registry is visible only to project members with Reporter role or higher. This behavior is similar to that of a private project with container registry visibility set to enabled.
disabled: The container registry is disabled.

See the container registry visibility permissions for more details about the permissions that this setting grants to users.

curl --request PUT "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/" \
     --header 'PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>' \
     --header 'Accept: application/json' \
     --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     --data-raw '{
         "container_registry_access_level": "private"
     }'

Example response:

{
  "id": 5,
  "name": "Project 5",
  "container_registry_access_level": "private",
  ...
}

Container registry pagination

By default, GET requests return 20 results at a time because the API results are paginated.

List registry repositories

Within a project

Get a list of registry repositories in a project.

GET /projects/:id/registry/repositories

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`id`	integer/string	yes	The ID or URL-encoded path of the project accessible by the authenticated user.
`tags`	boolean	no	If the parameter is included as true, each repository includes an array of `"tags"` in the response.
`tags_count`	boolean	no	If the parameter is included as true, each repository includes `"tags_count"` in the response .

curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/registry/repositories"

Example response:

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "name": "",
    "path": "group/project",
    "project_id": 9,
    "location": "gitlab.example.com:5000/group/project",
    "created_at": "2019-01-10T13:38:57.391Z",
    "cleanup_policy_started_at": "2020-01-10T15:40:57.391Z",
    "status": null
  },
  {
    "id": 2,
    "name": "releases",
    "path": "group/project/releases",
    "project_id": 9,
    "location": "gitlab.example.com:5000/group/project/releases",
    "created_at": "2019-01-10T13:39:08.229Z",
    "cleanup_policy_started_at": "2020-08-17T03:12:35.489Z",
    "status": "delete_ongoing"
  }
]

Within a group

Removed the tags and tag_count attributes in GitLab 15.0.

Get a list of registry repositories in a group.

GET /groups/:id/registry/repositories

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`id`	integer/string	yes	The ID or URL-encoded path of the group accessible by the authenticated user.

curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" \
     "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/groups/2/registry/repositories"

Example response:

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "name": "",
    "path": "group/project",
    "project_id": 9,
    "location": "gitlab.example.com:5000/group/project",
    "created_at": "2019-01-10T13:38:57.391Z",
    "cleanup_policy_started_at": "2020-08-17T03:12:35.489Z",
  },
  {
    "id": 2,
    "name": "",
    "path": "group/other_project",
    "project_id": 11,
    "location": "gitlab.example.com:5000/group/other_project",
    "created_at": "2019-01-10T13:39:08.229Z",
    "cleanup_policy_started_at": "2020-01-10T15:40:57.391Z",
  }
]

Get details of a single repository

Get details of a registry repository.

GET /registry/repositories/:id

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`id`	integer/string	yes	The ID of the registry repository accessible by the authenticated user.
`tags`	boolean	no	If the parameter is included as `true`, the response includes an array of `"tags"`.
`tags_count`	boolean	no	If the parameter is included as `true`, the response includes `"tags_count"`.
`size`	boolean	no	If the parameter is included as `true`, the response includes `"size"`. This is the deduplicated size of all images within the repository. Deduplication eliminates extra copies of identical data. For example, if you upload the same image twice, the container registry stores only one copy. This field is only available on GitLab.com for repositories created after `2021-11-04`.

curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" \
     "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/registry/repositories/2?tags=true&tags_count=true&size=true"

Example response:

{
  "id": 2,
  "name": "",
  "path": "group/project",
  "project_id": 9,
  "location": "gitlab.example.com:5000/group/project",
  "created_at": "2019-01-10T13:38:57.391Z",
  "cleanup_policy_started_at": "2020-08-17T03:12:35.489Z",
  "tags_count": 1,
  "tags": [
    {
      "name": "0.0.1",
      "path": "group/project:0.0.1",
      "location": "gitlab.example.com:5000/group/project:0.0.1"
    }
  ],
  "size": 2818413,
  "status": "delete_scheduled"
}

Delete registry repository

Delete a repository in registry.

This operation is executed asynchronously and might take some time to get executed.

DELETE /projects/:id/registry/repositories/:repository_id

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`id`	integer/string	yes	The ID or URL-encoded path of the project owned by the authenticated user.
`repository_id`	integer	yes	The ID of registry repository.

curl --request DELETE --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" \
     "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/registry/repositories/2"

List registry repository tags

Within a project

Keyset pagination introduced in GitLab 16.10 for GitLab.com only.

Get a list of tags for given registry repository.

GET /projects/:id/registry/repositories/:repository_id/tags

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`id`	integer/string	yes	The ID or URL-encoded path of the project accessible by the authenticated user.
`repository_id`	integer	yes	The ID of registry repository.

curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" \
     "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/registry/repositories/2/tags"

Example response:

[
  {
    "name": "A",
    "path": "group/project:A",
    "location": "gitlab.example.com:5000/group/project:A"
  },
  {
    "name": "latest",
    "path": "group/project:latest",
    "location": "gitlab.example.com:5000/group/project:latest"
  }
]

Get details of a registry repository tag

Get details of a registry repository tag.

GET /projects/:id/registry/repositories/:repository_id/tags/:tag_name

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`id`	integer/string	yes	The ID or URL-encoded path of the project accessible by the authenticated user.
`repository_id`	integer	yes	The ID of registry repository.
`tag_name`	string	yes	The name of tag.

curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" \
     "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/registry/repositories/2/tags/v10.0.0"

Example response:

{
  "name": "v10.0.0",
  "path": "group/project:latest",
  "location": "gitlab.example.com:5000/group/project:latest",
  "revision": "e9ed9d87c881d8c2fd3a31b41904d01ba0b836e7fd15240d774d811a1c248181",
  "short_revision": "e9ed9d87c",
  "digest": "sha256:c3490dcf10ffb6530c1303522a1405dfaf7daecd8f38d3e6a1ba19ea1f8a1751",
  "created_at": "2019-01-06T16:49:51.272+00:00",
  "total_size": 350224384
}

Delete a registry repository tag

Delete a registry repository tag.

DELETE /projects/:id/registry/repositories/:repository_id/tags/:tag_name

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`id`	integer/string	yes	The ID or URL-encoded path of the project owned by the authenticated user.
`repository_id`	integer	yes	The ID of registry repository.
`tag_name`	string	yes	The name of tag.

curl --request DELETE --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" \
     "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/registry/repositories/2/tags/v10.0.0"

This action doesn't delete blobs. To delete them and recycle disk space, run the garbage collection.

Delete registry repository tags in bulk

Delete registry repository tags in bulk based on given criteria.

For an overview, see Use the container registry API to delete all tags except *.

DELETE /projects/:id/registry/repositories/:repository_id/tags

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`id`	integer/string	yes	The ID or URL-encoded path of the project owned by the authenticated user.
`repository_id`	integer	yes	The ID of registry repository.
`name_regex`	string	no	The re2 regex of the name to delete. To delete all tags specify `.`. Note:* `name_regex` is deprecated in favor of `name_regex_delete`. This field is validated.
`name_regex_delete`	string	yes	The re2 regex of the name to delete. To delete all tags specify `.*`. This field is validated.
`name_regex_keep`	string	no	The re2 regex of the name to keep. This value overrides any matches from `name_regex_delete`. This field is validated. Note: setting to `.*` results in a no-op.
`keep_n`	integer	no	The amount of latest tags of given name to keep.
`older_than`	string	no	Tags to delete that are older than the given time, written in human readable form `1h`, `1d`, `1month`.

This API returns HTTP response status code 202 if successful, and performs the following operations:

It orders all tags by creation date. The creation date is the time of the manifest creation, not the time of tag push.
It removes only the tags matching the given name_regex_delete (or deprecated name_regex), keeping any that match name_regex_keep.
It never removes the tag named latest.
It keeps N latest matching tags (if keep_n is specified).
It only removes tags that are older than X amount of time (if older_than is specified).
It schedules the asynchronous job to be executed in the background.

These operations are executed asynchronously and can take time to get executed. You can run this at most once an hour for a given container repository. This action doesn't delete blobs. To delete them and recycle disk space, run the garbage collection.

WARNING: The number of tags deleted by this API is limited on GitLab.com because of the scale of the container registry there. If your container registry has a large number of tags to delete, only some of them are deleted, and you might need to call this API multiple times. To schedule tags for automatic deletion, use a cleanup policy instead.

Examples:

Remove tag names that are matching the regex (Git SHA), keep always at least 5, and remove ones that are older than 2 days:

curl --request DELETE --data 'name_regex_delete=[0-9a-z]{40}' --data 'keep_n=5' --data 'older_than=2d' \
     --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/registry/repositories/2/tags"

Remove all tags, but keep always the latest 5:

curl --request DELETE --data 'name_regex_delete=.*' --data 'keep_n=5' \
     --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/registry/repositories/2/tags"

Remove all tags, but keep always tags beginning with stable:

curl --request DELETE --data 'name_regex_delete=.*' --data 'name_regex_keep=stable.*' \
     --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/registry/repositories/2/tags"

Remove all tags that are older than 1 month:

curl --request DELETE --data 'name_regex_delete=.*' --data 'older_than=1month' \
     --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/registry/repositories/2/tags"

Use cURL with a regular expression that contains `+`

When using cURL, the + character in regular expressions must be URL-encoded, to be processed correctly by the GitLab Rails backend. For example:

curl --request DELETE --data-urlencode 'name_regex_delete=dev-.+' \
     --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/5/registry/repositories/2/tags"

Instance-wide endpoints

Beside the group- and project-specific GitLab APIs explained above, the container registry has its own endpoints. To query those, follow the Registry's built-in mechanism to obtain and use an authentication token.

NOTE: These are different from project or personal access tokens in the GitLab application.

Obtain token from GitLab

GET ${CI_SERVER_URL}/jwt/auth?service=container_registry&scope=*

You must specify the correct scopes and actions to retrieve a valid token:

$ SCOPE="repository:${CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE}:delete" #or push,pull

$ curl  --request GET --user "${CI_REGISTRY_USER}:${CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD}" \
        "https://gitlab.example.com/jwt/auth?service=container_registry&scope=${SCOPE}"
{"token":" ... "}

Delete image tags by reference

Endpoint v2/<name>/manifests/<tag> introduced and endpoint v2/<name>/tags/reference/<tag> deprecated in GitLab 16.4.

WARNING: Endpoint v2/<name>/tags/reference/<tag> deprecated in GitLab 16.4 and is planned for removal in 17.0. Use v2/<name>/manifests/<tag> instead. This change is a breaking change.

DELETE http(s)://${CI_REGISTRY}/v2/${CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE}/tags/reference/${CI_COMMIT_SHORT_SHA}

You can use the token retrieved with the predefined CI_REGISTRY_USER and CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD variables to delete container image tags by reference on your GitLab instance. The tag_delete Container-Registry-Feature must be enabled.

$ curl  --request DELETE --header "Authorization: Bearer <token_from_above>" \
        --header "Accept: application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json" \
        "https://gitlab.example.com:5050/v2/${CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE}/manifests/${CI_COMMIT_SHORT_SHA}"

Listing all container repositories

GET http(s)://${CI_REGISTRY}/v2/_catalog

To list all container repositories on your GitLab instance, administrator credentials are required:

$ SCOPE="registry:catalog:*"

$ curl  --request GET --user "<admin-username>:<admin-password>" \
        "https://gitlab.example.com/jwt/auth?service=container_registry&scope=${SCOPE}"
{"token":" ... "}

$ curl --header "Authorization: Bearer <token_from_above>" https://gitlab.example.com:5050/v2/_catalog

Container registry API

Change the visibility of the container registry

Container registry pagination

List registry repositories

Within a project

Within a group

Get details of a single repository

Delete registry repository

List registry repository tags

Within a project

Get details of a registry repository tag

Delete a registry repository tag

Delete registry repository tags in bulk

Use cURL with a regular expression that contains +

Instance-wide endpoints

Obtain token from GitLab

Delete image tags by reference

Listing all container repositories

Use cURL with a regular expression that contains `+`