GitLab

GitLab is a DevOps platform for hosting Git repositories, managing issues and merge requests, and running CI/CD pipelines.

ingestr supports GitLab as a source through its REST API.

URI format

The URI format for GitLab is as follows:

gitlab://?access_token=<access_token>

URI parameters:

• access_token (required): A GitLab personal access token used to authenticate with the REST API.
• base_url (optional): The API base URL for self-managed GitLab instances, including the /api/v4 suffix (e.g. https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4). Defaults to https://gitlab.com/api/v4.

Setting up a GitLab Integration

To connect to GitLab, you need a personal access token (PAT).

1. Log in to GitLab.
2. Select your avatar in the upper-right corner → Edit profile.
3. In the left sidebar, select Access → Personal access tokens.
4. From the Generate token dropdown, select Legacy token.
5. Enter a token name and an expiration date, then select the read_api scope (sufficient for read-only ingestion).
6. Select Generate token and copy the value (starts with glpat-).

For details, see the GitLab personal access tokens documentation.

Once you have your access token, let's say it is glpat-1234, here is a sample command that copies issues from GitLab into a DuckDB database:

ingestr ingest \
  --source-uri 'gitlab://?access_token=glpat-1234' \
  --source-table 'issues' \
  --dest-uri duckdb:///gitlab.duckdb \
  --dest-table 'dest.issues'

Tables

GitLab source allows ingesting the following resources into separate tables:

Table	PK	Inc Key	Inc Strategy	Details
projects	id	updated_at	merge	Projects the token is a member of (membership=true). Scoped to the run interval via updated_after/updated_before.
groups	id	–	replace	Groups the token is a member of. Full reload on each run.
users	id	–	replace	Users visible to the token. Full reload on each run. See the note below before using on gitlab.com.
issues	id	updated_at	merge	Issues the authenticated user created or is assigned to. Scoped to the run interval via updated_after/updated_before.
merge_requests	id	updated_at	merge	Merge requests the authenticated user created or is assigned to. Scoped to the run interval via updated_after/updated_before.

Use these as the --source-table parameter in the ingestr ingest command.

Note: GitLab objects carry both a global id and a project-scoped iid. ingestr keys on the global id. Nested fields such as labels, assignees, and references are preserved as JSON, and description fields remain Markdown strings.

Warning — users on gitlab.com: a regular token has no personal scoping on the /users endpoint, so on gitlab.com it returns the entire public user directory and the connector will page through all of it. This table is intended for self-managed / Dedicated instances with an admin token, where /users returns that instance's own user list.

Incremental loads

projects, issues, and merge_requests support incremental loading. Provide --interval-start (and optionally --interval-end) and ingestr pushes them to the GitLab API as updated_after/updated_before, fetching only records updated within the window and merging them on id.

ingestr ingest \
  --source-uri 'gitlab://?access_token=glpat-1234' \
  --source-table 'merge_requests' \
  --dest-uri duckdb:///gitlab.duckdb \
  --dest-table 'dest.merge_requests' \
  --interval-start '2026-01-01'