Office scripts does not allow getting data from private github repo with acces token

Question

In office scripts, I am trying to access csv files from a private Github repository. For this I use the following fetch call:

let token = "TOKEN"
const headers = {
  "Authorization": `token ${token}`
}
let url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ORGANISATION/REPO/main/data/example.csv
const res = await fetch(url, { headers });

When I inspect the browser dev tools I see the following error:

Access to fetch at "{github url}" from origin '{officescripts_url}.officescripts.microsoftusercontent.com' has been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: It does not have HTTP ok status.

My office script console tells me this (I replaced some urls just to be sure):

{message: "Failed to fetch", name: "TypeError", stack: "TypeError: Failed to fetch at self.fetch  ({url}) at importCSV ({url}) at async main (blob:{url}) at async _____wrapperMain (blob:{url})"}

When I put the same request in Insomnia, I can get my data without problems.

Is there a way to fix or work around this issue in Office scripts?

Answer 1

You can fetch text files from both private and public GitHub repositories.

Get the URL for the file

1. On Github click the file in the repository
2. click raw
3. Copy the whole url in the address bar
   • For private repositories you need to make sure to include the token in the URL: ?token=...

Example URLs

public

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wandyezj/data/master/lists/shapes.list.txt

private

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wandyezj/simple-website/master/LICENSE?token=GHSAT0AAAAAACJUEK6DGRAUMSQW3WZA6YLMZKD2B3A

Example Office Script

/**
 * Script to show how to fetch public text file data from GitHub and insert it into a worksheet.
 */
async function main(workbook: ExcelScript.Workbook) {

    // Read a text file on github
    // This file contains a list of shapes
    const request = await fetch("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wandyezj/data/master/lists/shapes.list.txt")
    const text = await request.text();
    console.log(text);

    // Insert into new worksheet
    const rows = text.split("\n").map(x => [x])
    workbook.addWorksheet().getRange(`A1:A${rows.length}`).setValues(rows);
}