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. 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 across the projects the token is a member of. Full reload on each run.
issues	id	updated_at	merge	All issues across the projects the token is a member of. Scoped to the run interval via updated_after/updated_before.
merge_requests	id	updated_at	merge	All merge requests across the projects the token is a member of. 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.

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'