Guides: The GitHub API

Brand New API at develop.github.com

The basic url template:

http://github.com/api/version/format/username/repository/type/object

• Current version: v1
• Acceptable formats: json, xml, yaml
• Acceptable types: commits, commit

Grabbing all recent commits:

$ curl -i http://github.com/api/v1/xml/caged/gitnub/commits/master | less

Grabbing a single commit:

$ curl -i http://github.com/api/v1/json/defunkt/github-gem/commit/c26d4ce9807ecf57d3f9eefe19ae64e75bcaaa8b | less

Repository search:

$ curl -i http://github.com/api/v1/xml/search/merb | less

You can also grab a user’s info, including a list of his repositories:

$ curl -i http://github.com/api/v1/json/defunkt | less

(Using token authentication, described below, will enable listing of private repositories.)

With JSON requests, you can have the result passed to a callback method of your choice:

$ curl -i http://github.com/api/v1/json/defunkt?callback=myCallbackMethod | less

Projects using API

• GitHub Badge (see also initial blog post)
• Badjo
• YAGHB – Yet another github badge
• textmate gem — Command-line package manager for textmate
• github commit badge – GitHub commit badge, showing the most recent commits of chosen repos
• ‘gadgets’ project and ‘demo generator’ (see also initial blog post)
• GitHub Projects Wordpress Plug-in – Also at the official Wordpress plug-in directory
• github-repos – Tutorial and Example
• github-terminal , working example at Github Terminal
• git-trip – Visualize git repositories.
• github-social-badge – Social badge: visualize projects and followers. Working example
• codeigniter-github – CodeIgniter / PHP wrapper library.
• github user page bookmarklet – adds additional repo stats to github user pages and provides repository sorting.
• RefactorMe – Site posts daily code snippets from open source projects. All code is powered by Github Gists’ and the site will also create the gist for users if they do not want to create it themselves.

Additional resources

• Token Authentication
• Making sense of the participation graph data ( explanation of the participation data )