gitpython - how to check if a remote branch exists?

GitPython has references to all the branches. A user can iterate to check if the branch is part of that reference or not.

To print all the branches use this as reference:

for ref in repo.references:
    print("Branch Name is: ", ref.name)

Similarly for your purpose, if you can do something like

for ref in repo.references:
    if branchName == ref.name:
        Do likely something
    else:
        Do unlikely something

The simplest seems to be:

allBranches = git.Git().branch("-all").split()
"<testedBranch>" in allBranches
>>> true/false

• this embeds the branches within all the standard techniques of a sequence protocol

This may not work, but give it a shot let me know how it goes:

does_exist = True
try:
    repo.git.checkout('branch_name')
except repo.exc.GitCommandError:
    does_exist = False

print(does_exist)

This may also work but give it a try:

repo.git.rev_parse('--verify', 'branch_name')

Worked for me:

def check_branch_exists(github_repo, branch) -> bool:
    for br in github_repo.get_branches():
        if branch == br.name:
            return True
    return False

To those like me that want to call using a remote url without a local repo

import git

def _ls_remote_branches(url):
    remote_branches = []
    g = git.cmd.Git()
    for ref in g.ls_remote(url).split("\n"):
        if "head" in ref:
            hash_ref_list = ref.split("\t")
            remote_branches.append(
                hash_ref_list[1].split("/")[-1]
            )
    return remote_branches

Edit 1: other answers did not work for me because I was looking for something that does not require a local git repo.

Edit 2: This was based on the upvoted answer to another question here

Thanks Muadh! I was able to get this to work:

try:
    repo.git.checkout( 'origin/' + branch_name, b=branch_name )
except:
    repo.git.checkout( 'origin/master', b=branch_name )