GitLab Delete Bulk Issues

At the time of this writing (June 20, 2019), GitLab doesn’t have a feature to bulk delete issues. This is a real challenge for me right now. I’ve got builds auto-creating issues that have been ignored for months. I now have thousands of issues to remove.

Save me  your lectures about maintenance and architecture. Let’s just fix this issue.

You’ll need to get your own personal access token. You can get that by going to https://example.gitlab.com/profile/personal_access_tokens.

You’ll also need to know your user Id. You can get that by going to https://example.gitlab.com/profile

Once you have all that, fill in the appropriate variables and fire away 😀

#!/usr/bin/env bash

declare -i _page=0
declare -i _number_of_pages=0
declare _person_access_token="asdfasdfasdfsadf"
declare _gitlab_host="https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4"
declare _assignee="12345"
declare _url="${_gitlab_host}/issues?private_token=${_person_access_token}&assignee=${_assignee}&per_page=100"

_number_of_pages=$(curl -i -I "${_url}" | grep x-total-pages | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/[^0-9]*//g')

while [ $_page -lt "$_number_of_pages" ]; do
  _page=$((_page+1))
  _url="${_gitlab_host}/v4/issues?private_token=${_person_access_token}&assignee=${_assignee}&per_page=100&page=${_page}"
  _data=$(curl "${_url}" | jq -r '.[] | "\(.iid) \(.project_id)"')

  while read -r _info; do
    echo "Project [${_project_id}] Issue [${_issue_iid}]"
    _issue_iid=$(echo "${_info}" | awk '{print $1}')
    _project_id=$(echo "${_info}" | awk '{print $2}')
    _url="${_gitlab_host}/projects/${_project_id}/issues/${_issue_iid}"
    curl --request DELETE --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: ${_person_access_token}" "${_url}"
  done <<< "${_data}"
done