Alternative methods to avoid full tree hierachy request "?recursive=true"

There are three methods which requests full tree hierarchy ("?recursive=true"):
1. this.getSha
2. this.remove
3. this.move

Sometimes it is very heavy request to get full tree hierarchy. Is it possible to introduce an alternative methods like:

// Remove a file from the tree by sha and path
// -------
this.remove2 = function(branch, path, sha, cb) {
_request("DELETE", repoPath + "/contents/" + path, {"message": "test commit", sha: sha, branch:branch}, cb, "json");
};

2.this.getSha
It is possible to use JSON request for the "/contents/" to get more information about the it:

this.contents2 = function(branch, path, cb) {
_request("GET", repoPath + "/contents/ref=" + branch, { path: path }, cb, "json");
};