How to Download a GitHub Repository as a ZIP File in Python

import requests
import zipfile
import io
import os

def download_github_repo_as_zip(repo_url, output_path='.'):
    """
    Download a GitHub repository as a ZIP file.
    
    Args:
        repo_url (str): Full GitHub repository URL (e.g., 'https://github.com/username/repo')
        output_path (str): Directory to save the ZIP file
    
    Returns:
        str: Path to the downloaded ZIP file
    """
    # Extract owner and repo name from URL
    parts = repo_url.rstrip('/').split('/')
    owner, repo = parts[-2], parts[-1]
    
    # Construct the download URL for the default branch (usually main or master)
    download_url = f'https://api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}/zipball'
    
    # Download the repository
    response = requests.get(download_url)
    response.raise_for_status()
    
    # Create a ZIP file in memory and extract to disk
    zip_data = io.BytesIO(response.content)
    output_file = os.path.join(output_path, f'{repo}.zip')
    
    with open(output_file, 'wb') as f:
        f.write(zip_data.getvalue())
    
    return output_file

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # Example: Download a small public repository (Python's requests library)
    repo_url = 'https://github.com/psf/requests'
    downloaded_file = download_github_repo_as_zip(repo_url)
    print(f'Repository downloaded to: {downloaded_file}')
    print(f'File size: {os.path.getsize(downloaded_file)} bytes')