go-github

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

Currently, go-github requires Go version 1.9 or greater. go-github tracks Go's version support policy. We do our best not to break older versions of Go if we don't have to, but due to tooling constraints, we don't always test older versions.

If you're interested in using the GraphQL API v4, the recommended library is shurcooL/githubv4.

Usage

import "github.com/google/go-github/v32/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 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(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 to the structure of the GitHub API documentation at https://docs.github.com/en/rest/reference/.

NOTE: Using the context package, one can easily pass cancelation signals and deadlines to various services of the client for handling a request. In case there is no context available, then context.Background() can be used as a starting point.

For more sample code snippets, head over to the example directory.

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() {
	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 user
	repos, _, err := client.Repositories.List(ctx, "", 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.

GitHub Apps authentication can be provided by the ghinstallation package.

import "github.com/bradleyfalzon/ghinstallation"

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...
}

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. The Search API has a custom rate limit. Unauthenticated clients are limited to 10 requests per minute, while authenticated clients can make up to 30 requests per minute. To receive the higher rate limit when making calls that are not issued on behalf of a user, use UnauthenticatedRateLimitedTransport.

The returned Response.Rate value contains the rate limit information from the most recent API call. If a recent enough response isn't available, you can use RateLimits to fetch 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(ctx, "", nil)
if _, ok := err.(*github.RateLimitError); ok {
	log.Println("hit rate limit")
}

Learn more about GitHub rate limiting at https://docs.github.com/en/rest/reference/rate-limit.

Accepted Status

Some endpoints may return a 202 Accepted status code, meaning that the information required is not yet ready and was scheduled to be gathered on the GitHub side. Methods known to behave like this are documented specifying this 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 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://docs.github.com/en/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 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(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 full package docs.

Integration Tests

You can run integration tests from the test 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.

Contributing

I would like to cover the entire GitHub API and contributions are of course always welcome. The calling pattern is pretty well established, so adding new methods is relatively straightforward. See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

Versioning

In general, go-github follows semver as closely as we can for tagging releases of the package. For self-contained libraries, the application of semantic versioning is relatively straightforward and generally understood. But because go-github is a client library for the GitHub API, which itself changes behavior, and because we are typically pretty aggressive about implementing preview features of the GitHub API, we've adopted the following versioning policy:

• We increment the major version with any incompatible change to non-preview functionality, including changes to the exported Go API surface or behavior of the API.
• We increment the minor version with any backwards-compatible changes to functionality, as well as any changes to preview functionality in the GitHub API. 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 the patch version with any backwards-compatible bug fixes.

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

License

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