go-github

go-github is a Go client library for accessing theGitHub API v3.

Currently,go-github requires Go version 1.13 or greater. go-github tracksGo's version support policy. We do our best not to breakolder versions of Go if we don't have to, but due to tooling constraints, wedon't always test older versions.

If you're interested in using theGraphQL API v4, the recommended library isshurcooL/githubv4.

Installation

go-github is compatible with modern Go releases in module mode, with Go installed:

go get github.com/google/go-github/v43

will resolve and add the package to the current development module, along with its dependencies.

Alternatively the same can be achieved if you use import in a package:

import "github.com/google/go-github/v43/github"

and rungo get without parameters.

Finally, to use the top-of-trunk version of this repo, use the following command:

go get github.com/google/go-github/v43@master

Usage

import "github.com/google/go-github/v43/github"// with go modules enabled (GO111MODULE=on or outside GOPATH)import "github.com/google/go-github/github" // with go modules disabled

Construct a new GitHub client, then use the various services on the client toaccess different parts of the GitHub API. For example:

client := github.NewClient(nil)// list all organizations for user "willnorris"orgs, _, err := client.Organizations.List(context.Background(), "willnorris", nil)

Some API methods have optional parameters that can be passed. For example:

client := github.NewClient(nil)// list public repositories for org "github"opt := &github.RepositoryListByOrgOptions{Type: "public"}repos, _, err := client.Repositories.ListByOrg(context.Background(), "github", opt)

The services of a client divide the API into logical chunks and correspond tothe structure of the GitHub API documentation athttps://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/rest/reference/.

NOTE: Using thecontext package, one can easilypass cancelation signals and deadlines to various services of the client forhandling a request. In case there is no context available, thencontext.Background()can be used as a starting point.

For more sample code snippets, head over to theexample directory.

Authentication

The go-github library does not directly handle authentication. Instead, whencreating a new client, pass anhttp.Client that can handle authentication foryou. The easiest and recommended way to do this is using theoauth2library, but you can always use any other library that provides anhttp.Client. If you have an OAuth2 access token (for example, apersonalAPI token), you can use it with the oauth2 library using:

import "golang.org/x/oauth2"func main() {ctx := context.Background()ts := oauth2.StaticTokenSource(&oauth2.Token{AccessToken: "... your access token ..."},)tc := oauth2.NewClient(ctx, ts)client := github.NewClient(tc)// list all repositories for the authenticated userrepos, _, err := client.Repositories.List(ctx, "", nil)}

Note that when using an authenticated Client, all calls made by the client willinclude the specified OAuth token. Therefore, authenticated clients shouldalmost never be shared between different users.

See theoauth2 docs for complete instructions on using that library.

For API methods that require HTTP Basic Authentication, use theBasicAuthTransport.

GitHub Apps authentication can be provided by theghinstallationpackage.

import ("github.com/bradleyfalzon/ghinstallation/v2""github.com/google/go-github/v43/github")func main() {// Wrap the shared transport for use with the integration ID 1 authenticating with installation ID 99.itr, err := ghinstallation.NewKeyFromFile(http.DefaultTransport, 1, 99, "2016-10-19.private-key.pem")if err != nil {// Handle error.}// Use installation transport with client.client := github.NewClient(&http.Client{Transport: itr})// Use client...}

Note: In order to interact with certain APIs, for example writing a file to a repo, one must generate an installation tokenusing the installation ID of the GitHub app and authenticate with the OAuth method mentioned above. See the examples.

Rate Limiting

GitHub imposes a rate limit on all API clients. Unauthenticated clients arelimited to 60 requests per hour, while authenticated clients can make up to5,000 requests per hour. The Search API has a custom rate limit. Unauthenticatedclients are limited to 10 requests per minute, while authenticated clientscan make up to 30 requests per minute. To receive the higher rate limit whenmaking calls that are not issued on behalf of a user,useUnauthenticatedRateLimitedTransport.

The returnedResponse.Rate value contains the rate limit informationfrom the most recent API call. If a recent enough response isn'tavailable, you can useRateLimits to fetch the most up-to-date ratelimit data for the client.

To detect an API rate limit error, you can check if its type is*github.RateLimitError:

repos, _, err := client.Repositories.List(ctx, "", nil)if _, ok := err.(*github.RateLimitError); ok {log.Println("hit rate limit")}

Learn more about GitHub rate limiting athttps://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/rest/reference/rate-limit.

Accepted Status

Some endpoints may return a 202 Accepted status code, meaning that theinformation required is not yet ready and was scheduled to be gathered onthe GitHub side. Methods known to behave like this are documented specifyingthis behavior.

To detect this condition of error, you can check if its type is*github.AcceptedError:

stats, _, err := client.Repositories.ListContributorsStats(ctx, org, repo)if _, ok := err.(*github.AcceptedError); ok {log.Println("scheduled on GitHub side")}

Conditional Requests

The GitHub API has good support for conditional requests which will helpprevent you from burning through your rate limit, as well as help speed up yourapplication.go-github does not handle conditional requests directly, but isinstead designed to work with a cachinghttp.Transport. We recommend usinghttps://github.com/gregjones/httpcache for that.

Learn more about GitHub conditional requests athttps://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/rest/overview/resources-in-the-rest-api#conditional-requests.

Creating and Updating Resources

All structs for GitHub resources use pointer values for all non-repeated fields.This allows distinguishing between unset fields and those set to a zero-value.Helper functions have been provided to easily create these pointers for string,bool, and int values. For example:

// create a new private repository named "foo"repo := &github.Repository{Name:    github.String("foo"),Private: github.Bool(true),}client.Repositories.Create(ctx, "", repo)

Users who have worked with protocol buffers should find this pattern familiar.

Pagination

All requests for resource collections (repos, pull requests, issues, etc.)support pagination. Pagination options are described in thegithub.ListOptions struct and passed to the list methods directly or as anembedded type of a more specific list options struct (for examplegithub.PullRequestListOptions). Pages information is available via thegithub.Response struct.

client := github.NewClient(nil)opt := &github.RepositoryListByOrgOptions{ListOptions: github.ListOptions{PerPage: 10},}// get all pages of resultsvar allRepos []*github.Repositoryfor {repos, resp, err := client.Repositories.ListByOrg(ctx, "github", opt)if err != nil {return err}allRepos = append(allRepos, repos...)if resp.NextPage == 0 {break}opt.Page = resp.NextPage}

For complete usage of go-github, see the fullpackage docs.

Testing code that usesgo-github

The repomigueleliasweb/go-github-mock provides a way to mock responses. Check the repo for more details.

Integration Tests

You can run integration tests from thetest directory. See the integration testsREADME.

Contributing

I would like to cover the entire GitHub API and contributions are of course always welcome. Thecalling pattern is pretty well established, so adding new methods is relativelystraightforward. SeeCONTRIBUTING.md for details.

Versioning

In general, go-github followssemver as closely as wecan for tagging releases of the package. For self-contained libraries, theapplication of semantic versioning is relatively straightforward and generallyunderstood. But because go-github is a client library for the GitHub API, whichitself changes behavior, and because we are typically pretty aggressive aboutimplementing preview features of the GitHub API, we've adopted the followingversioning policy:

• We increment themajor version with any incompatible change tonon-preview functionality, including changes to the exported Go API surfaceor behavior of the API.
• We increment theminor version with any backwards-compatible changes tofunctionality, as well as any changes to preview functionality in the GitHubAPI. GitHub makes no guarantee about the stability of preview functionality,so neither do we consider it a stable part of the go-github API.
• We increment thepatch version with any backwards-compatible bug fixes.

Preview functionality may take the form of entire methods or simply additionaldata returned from an otherwise non-preview method. Refer to the GitHub APIdocumentation for details on preview functionality.

License

This library is distributed under the BSD-style license found in theLICENSEfile.