go-github

go-github is a Go client library for accessing the GitHub API.

Documentation:
Mailing List: go-github@googlegroups.com
Build Status:
Test Coverage: (gocov report)

go-github requires Go version 1.4 or greater.

Usage

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

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

client := github.NewClient(nil)

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

The services of a client divide the API into logical chunks and correspond to the structure of the GitHub API documentation at http://developer.github.com/v3/.

Authentication

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

import "golang.org/x/oauth2"

func main() {
  ts := oauth2.StaticTokenSource(
    &oauth2.Token{AccessToken: "... your access token ..."},
  )
  tc := oauth2.NewClient(oauth2.NoContext, ts)

  client := github.NewClient(tc)

  // list all repositories for the authenticated user
  repos, _, err := client.Repositories.List("", nil)
}

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

See the oauth2 docs for complete instructions on using that library.

For API methods that require HTTP Basic Authentication, use the BasicAuthTransport.

Rate Limiting

GitHub imposes a rate limit on all API clients. Unauthenticated clients are limited to 60 requests per hour, while authenticated clients can make up to 5,000 requests per hour. To receive the higher rate limit when making calls that are not issued on behalf of a user, use the UnauthenticatedRateLimitedTransport.

The Rate method on a client returns the rate limit information based on the most recent API call. This is updated on every call, but may be out of date if it's been some time since the last API call and other clients have made subsequent requests since then. You can always call RateLimits() directly to get the most up-to-date rate limit 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("", nil)
if _, ok := err.(*github.RateLimitError); ok {
	log.Println("hit rate limit")
}

Learn more about GitHub rate limiting at http://developer.github.com/v3/#rate-limiting.

Conditional Requests

The GitHub API has good support for conditional requests which will help prevent you from burning through your rate limit, as well as help speed up your application. go-github does not handle conditional requests directly, but is instead designed to work with a caching http.Transport. We recommend using https://github.com/gregjones/httpcache for that.

Learn more about GitHub conditional requests at https://developer.github.com/v3/#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("", 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 the github.ListOptions struct and passed to the list methods directly or as an embedded type of a more specific list options struct (for example github.PullRequestListOptions). Pages information is available via the github.Response struct.

client := github.NewClient(nil)

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

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

Integration Tests

You can run integration tests from the tests directory. See the integration tests README.

Roadmap

This library is being initially developed for an internal application at Google, so API methods will likely be implemented in the order that they are needed by that application. You can track the status of implementation in this Google spreadsheet. Eventually, I would like to cover the entire GitHub API, so contributions are of course always welcome. The calling pattern is pretty well established, so adding new methods is relatively straightforward.

License

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