Composer [UnexpectedValueException] error will trying to use composer to install a github project

Question

I am trying to install a Github project using composer and get the following error:

Composer [UnexpectedValueException] Your Github oauth token for github.com contains invalid characters: ""

Can anyone explain what I need to do to correct this error?

I am using the following command:

composer create-project --prefer-dist --stability=dev \
    vova07/yii2-start yii2-start

Thank you.

The new answer with `composer self-update` was helpful for me: https://stackoverflow.com/a/67828227/470749 — Ryan, Jun 10 '21 at 17:01

rafaelbiten · Answer 1 · 2021-11-23T21:07:00.103

88

I started getting a similar error and the reason was that Github recently changed the format of their auth tokens:

https://github.blog/changelog/2021-03-31-authentication-token-format-updates-are-generally-available/

To resolve the error:

Find the composer/auth.json file (if you're running the project in a container, you'll have to bash into it and find the file in there)
Remove its github.com entry. Your file will probably look like the following after removing the entry: {"github-oauth": {}}
Run composer self-update. The issue got resolved in version 2.0.12. See the first item in the changelog for that version here: https://getcomposer.org/changelog/2.0.12

After that, you can restore your composer/auth.json file to its initial state as the newer version of composer will recognize the new key format.

edited Nov 23 '21 at 21:07

answered Apr 08 '21 at 13:34

rafaelbiten

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Even if I try self-update I get the same error, I can't do anything – DarkteK Apr 08 '21 at 14:09
2

Did the self-update succeed? SInce that did the trick for me. – Walter81 Apr 09 '21 at 07:32
2

I just had to run the following command: `php /usr/local/bin/composer self-update` from within the container where I have the project running and it worked for me. – rafaelbiten Apr 09 '21 at 13:01
7

I replaced my `~/.composer/auth.json` with `{}` to get passed the error. https://stackoverflow.com/a/38746307/569976 talks about where to find this directory YMMY – neubert Apr 10 '21 at 00:12
3

@DarkteK remove the `github-oauth` line from the `~/.config/composer/auth.json` file, run composer self-update and the add the removed line back to auth.json – Attila Fulop Apr 12 '21 at 10:17
composer upgrade was a solution in my case - thanks – Krzysztof Raciniewski Apr 13 '21 at 11:51
Both `self-update` and `upgrade` do nothing for me and just print the same error. – Paul Apr 13 '21 at 23:42
I renamed `~/.composer/auth.json` to `auth.json~`, updated Composer, then restored the original filename. – David Oliver Apr 26 '21 at 13:55
I renamed `~/.composer/auth.json` to `auth.json~`, updated Composer, then restored the original filename. – David Oliver Apr 26 '21 at 13:56
1

How to know where the auth.json is located? – Black Sep 07 '21 at 12:02

score 78 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 11 '21 at 04:10

78

You can try Basic Auth instead:

Change this (oauth):

  "github-oauth": {
    "github.com": "ghp_[YOUR-PERSONAL-TOKEN]"
  }

To this (basic auth):

  "http-basic": {
    "github.com": {
      "username": "[YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME]",
      "password": "ghp_[YOUR-PERSONAL-TOKEN]"
    }
  }

You can find instructions on how to create a Personal Access Token

Inspired from github docs. Apparently, you can use Basic Authentication with a Personal Access token instead of oauth in some cases (e.g. like mine: installing a private git repo with composer).

answered Apr 11 '21 at 04:10

kevnk

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Unless you can update Composer to v2, this is the only working solution. Thanks! – gyo Apr 12 '21 at 12:40
1

Worked for me, I had to update the file `/root/.composer/auth.json` in my Docker container (not on my PC) using an editor like vim, then it worked. – Paul Apr 14 '21 at 17:47
It worked for me after updating .compoer/auth.json as mentioned – Praveen Govind Apr 19 '21 at 15:30

score 40 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 11 '20 at 21:33

40

I fixed it.

Goto C:\Users\XXXXX\AppData\Roaming\Composer

Open the auth.json

delete the github.com entry under "github-oauth": {}

That's it.

answered Sep 11 '20 at 21:33

Ruchir Mehta

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Composer seem to do a rather aggressive validation on tokens. So aggressive, that updating my GitHub token to the new format yielded this error to me. I was running Composer 2.0.8 and I had to remove the token and update to Composer 2.0.12 and the re-apply the token. – Niklas Ekman Apr 06 '21 at 09:30
@NiklasEkman how did you solve it? i tried removing the github.com but it did'nt work. can you shae your structure? – Thiago Dias Apr 06 '21 at 13:56
@Thiago Follow the instructions in the answer above. After you've deleted the `github-auth` entry, run `composer self-update` and then add whatever you deleted back to the file. – Niklas Ekman Apr 07 '21 at 15:00
I've comment an update for this answer, please check. – fudu Apr 13 '21 at 07:11
File does not exist at the specified location. – Paul Apr 13 '21 at 23:38
@ruchir.mehta I am receiving this error after applying your solution. Thanks for the location of the file by the way. I was having difficulty in finding. [Seld\JsonLint\ParsingException] "C:/Users/umair/AppData/Roaming/Composer/auth.json" does not contain valid JSON Parse error on line 1: "github-oauth": {} -------------^ Expected one of: 'EOF', '}', ',', ']' – Umair May 01 '21 at 14:35
This is not a solution. If you need authentication, composer will ask for a token and the problem is created again. – Stephan Vierkant Jun 22 '21 at 07:25
Thank you. Solved my problem 2 times. – Abdellah Ramadan Oct 15 '21 at 15:36

score 18 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 08 '22 at 15:26

18

Update answer for Masiorama and Ruchir Mehta:

If you looking for file auth.json but don't know how, use this command:

locate auth.json

And here's the result:
You can see that auth.json will look like this:

/home/{your user name}/.config/composer/auth.json

Then you could use this command to edit the file:

sudo gedit /home/dev/.config/composer/auth.json

And remove content inside github-oauth.

edited Feb 08 '22 at 15:26

Masiorama

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answered Apr 13 '21 at 07:10

fudu

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Does not really help. The next token I generate is invalid too. – Black Nov 17 '22 at 09:11

score 14 · Answer 5 · answered May 07 '21 at 15:21

If you're on MacOS, the auth.json file is at ~/.composer/auth.json. Then from there, you can remove the value for github-oauth. I tried fully deleting the file but I got a parse error, Expected one of: 'STRING', 'NUMBER', 'NULL', 'TRUE', 'FALSE', '{', '['. Your auth.json file should look like this:

{
        "github-oauth": {}
}

This is similar to other answers posted but I wasn't able to use the locate command on MacOS so this might be helpful to other Mac users

score 7 · Answer 6 · answered May 11 '21 at 10:17

7

This error recently popped up from nowhere.

Simply deleting the whole auth file worked for me..! Not sure why / when it appeared in the first place.

~/.composer/auth.json

answered May 11 '21 at 10:17

00-BBB

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Masiorama · Answer 7 · 2015-06-09T08:20:16.917

5

As far as I know (I'm a beginner with composer too), the problem is with your authentication, so you have to fix your credentials in auth.json inside path-to-composer/.composer/

Inside you will find a json which will probably looks like:

{
  "github-oauth": {
    "github.com": null
  }
}

Fix that and you should be ok ;)

edited Jun 09 '15 at 08:20

answered Nov 03 '14 at 10:54

Masiorama

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If you do not know how to fix manually, an easier solution would be to completely erase the auth.json. This way, it will try to recreate the credentials the next time you prepare a project. ;) – Masiorama Nov 03 '14 at 11:10
5

for those on linux looking on the above path: ` ~/.config/composer/auth.json` wrestled a lot with find this today :) – Johhn Apr 07 '21 at 15:13
1

I've comment an update for this answer, please check. – fudu Apr 13 '21 at 07:11

score 3 · Answer 8 · edited Jun 10 '21 at 17:01

3

The solution is just to upgrade your Composer version using command composer self-update.

edited Jun 10 '21 at 17:01

Ryan

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answered Jun 03 '21 at 20:23

Alhiane

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Today `composer self-update` didn't work for me even though I think it did in the past since I see that I'd already upvoted this answer. Today https://stackoverflow.com/a/68149438/470749 helped. – Ryan Aug 25 '21 at 18:50

score 3 · Answer 9 · edited Jul 04 '21 at 12:25

3

Go to C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Composer Open the auth.json file. Clear everything and paste the below code

{
"bitbucket-oauth": {},
"github-oauth": {},
"gitlab-oauth": {},
"gitlab-token": {},
"http-basic": {},
"bearer": {}
}

I hope it will be solved

edited Jul 04 '21 at 12:25

Slava Rozhnev

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answered Jul 03 '21 at 16:51

Tanvir Hossen Bappy

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this solved my issue. Thanks mate! – Miki Oct 17 '21 at 13:57

score 3 · Answer 10 · answered Jul 22 '21 at 15:08

3

I run in the same problem after upgrading githup api token to the new format. The answer is you need to upgrade composer version 1.10.21 or higher that fixes this problem.

answered Jul 22 '21 at 15:08

Radon8472

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To give more details, at first, remove the key from file ```~/.composer/auth.json``` => ```"github-oauth": {}```. Then, update composer to the latest needed major version. For instance, if you need version 1: ```composer self-update --1``` and you will be good to go. – Alliswell Sep 27 '21 at 10:39
The solution was to change the auth-method like answered here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/67041384/2377961 – Radon8472 Oct 15 '21 at 15:30

score 2 · Answer 11 · answered May 26 '21 at 21:37

Same solution as the answer of Paulina Khew but with command lines on MacOS :

cd ~/.composer/
nano auth.json

Delete what is inside th bracket :

{
        "github-oauth": {}
}

When you're ready to save the file, hold down the Ctrl key and press the letter O

Press the Enter key on your keyboard to save.

When finished, press Ctrl + X to close nano and return to your shell.

score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Mar 23 '22 at 09:57

Edit the composer authentication configuration file ~/.composer/auth.json

Then replace the following.

"http-basic": {
  "github.com": {
    "username": "[YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME]",
    "password": "ghp_[YOUR-PERSONAL-TOKEN]"
  }
}

Now run the command composer install

Valerio Bozz · Answer 13 · 2021-06-22T07:34:31.237

That's a bug.

If you have Debian or Ubuntu, try this patch. Otherwise read the last line.

Quick copy-paste patch

If you have Debian 10 buster or Ubuntu 20.LTS or similar distributions, try this copy-paste command:

wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/valerio-bozzolan/84364c28a3bba13751c504214016adcf/raw/c1356d529c89c10de4c959058e2e86ffe58fa407/fix-composer.patch -O /tmp/fix-composer.patch
sudo patch /usr/share/php/Composer/IO/BaseIO.php /tmp/fix-composer.patch

If it does not work, write it in the comments.

Step-by-step explaination

Your Composer version has a bug: you are able to save a valid GitHub token, but then it's not able to read that token again because Composer thinks that your GitHub token cannot contain underscores or stuff like that. Moreover, it's strange that Composer checks its syntax only the second time. Why? that's another story.

The fix is simple. You can temporary disable that wrong validation in your Composer version. Also because GitHub is a proprietary service and their specifications can change over time (as you demonstrated today). So it makes sense not to validate the syntax of GitHub tokens. The only person who should hard-validate GitHub tokens is GitHub itself, not Composer.

If you installed Composer via apt install composer, probably you will not have any update available and surely you cannot use self-update because Composer is read-only for security reasons (and for a similar reason, you should not execute Composer from root). Instead, you can create a safe hot-patch to fix that specific issue.

To create a patch, create a file called /tmp/fix-composer.patch with this exact content:

103,105c103,105
<             if (!preg_match('{^[.a-z0-9]+$}', $token)) {
<                 throw new \UnexpectedValueException('Your github oauth token for '.$domain.' contains invalid characters: "'.$token.'"');
<             }
---
> //            if (!preg_match('{^[.a-z0-9]+$}', $token)) {
> //                throw new \UnexpectedValueException('Your github oauth token for '.$domain.' contains invalid characters: "'.$token.'"');
> //

That content can also be seen from here:

https://gist.github.com/valerio-bozzolan/84364c28a3bba13751c504214016adcf

Then run this command to apply that patch:

sudo patch /usr/share/php/Composer/IO/BaseIO.php /tmp/fix-composer.patch

If it does not work, probably you have not installed composer via apt.

In short, whatever operating system, and whatever installation method, locate the file BaseIO.php in your Composer and comment out the validation check.

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Jun 09 '23 at 14:41

0

If you are using Composer 1 and Magento is latest version.Than upgrade your composer version 2.

answered Jun 09 '23 at 14:41

Anees

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4

This does in fact not only affects historic versions in the `--1` channel, but also in the channels of `--2` and `--2.2`. Updating however is not a bad idea, albeit other answers cover that already. Looks more like a comment to me than an answer. – hakre Jun 09 '23 at 20:22

Composer [UnexpectedValueException] error will trying to use composer to install a github project

14 Answers14

Quick copy-paste patch

Step-by-step explaination

Linked

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