REST API returns 404 when trying to get pull request comments

[Jackenmen]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

In order to get pull request comments (not review comments), you'd normally use List issue comments endpoint (/repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{issue_number}/comments). However, for temporary private forks, this returns a 404:

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer ghp_...' 'https://api.github.com/repos/Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot-ghsa-6rh9-vc43-xpm4/issues/1/comments'
{
  "message": "Not Found",
  "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest",
  "status": "404"
}

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[rudra6155]

Hi,

I can't confirm the exact cause, but I have a likely suspect. Temporary private forks are restricted on purpose. GitHub's docs say integrations, CI included, can't access them, and status checks don't run on their pull requests. They don't list every API limitation, but some maintainers note that Issues can't be enabled on these forks. On a normal repo, PR comments go through the issues comments endpoint, so if the fork has Issues switched off, that route could return 404 even though the PR itself exists.

You can check this from your side with the same token:

• GET /repos/{owner}/{repo} on the fork and look at has_issues. If it's false, that's probably your answer.
• GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/1. If that returns 200 while the issue comments call returns 404, your token clearly has access to the fork and the problem is specific to the issues endpoint, not auth.

If it does turn out to be the Issues setting, it might be worth trying the GraphQL API (pullRequest(number: 1) { comments { ... } } on the fork). I haven't tested that against a temporary fork, so I don't know whether it's handled any differently, but it's a cheap thing to try.

Either way, I'd say the bug report still stands. The PR comments are visible in the UI, so either the REST API should return them or the docs should say the endpoint isn't supported for temporary private forks. A clear 404 with no explanation isn't great.

Side note: probably worth rotating that token if the full value ever ended up anywhere outside your machine, even though it's redacted here.