github

JavaScript GitHub API for node.js

A node.js module, which provides an object oriented wrapper for the GitHub API. This library is a direct port of php-github-api by Thibault Duplessis to JavaScript. The only major difference is that the JavaScript code is fully asynchronous.

Installation

Install with the node package manager npm:

  $ npm install github

or

Install via git clone:

  $ git clone git://github.com/ajaxorg/node-github.git && cd node-github && git submodule update --init

Example

Print all followers of the user "fjakobs" to the console.

var sys = require("sys");
var GitHubApi = require("github").GitHubApi;

var github = new GitHubApi(true);
github.getUserApi().getFollowers('fjakobs', function(err, followers) {
    console.log(followers.join('\n'));
});

First the GitHubApi class is imported from the github module. This class provides access to all of GitHub's APIs (e.g. user, commit or repository APIs). The getFollowers method lists all followers of a given GitHub user. Is is part of the user API. It takes the user name as first argument and a callback as last argument. Once the follower list is returned from the server, the callback is called.

Like in node.js callbacks are always the last argument. If the functions fails an error object is passed as first argument to the callback.

Authentification

Most GitHub API calls don't require authentification. As a rule of thumb: If you can see the information by visiting the site without being logged in, you don't have to be authenticated to retrieve the same information through the API. Of course calls, which change data or read sensitive information have to be authenticated.

You need the GitHub user name and the API key for authentification. The API key can be found in the user's Account Settings page.

This example shows how to authenticate and then change location field of the account settings to Argentinia:

github.authenticate(username, token);
github.getUserApi().update(username, {location: "Argentinia"}, function(err) {
    console.log("done!");
});

Note that the authenticate method is synchronous because it only stores the credentials for the next request.

Implemented GitHub APIs

• User API: 100%
• Commit API: 100%
• Object API: 100%
• Repository API: almost complete. Only create and delete repository is missing
• Issues API: only getList is implemented
• Gist API: still missing
• Network API: still missing

Running the Tests

The unit tests are based on the node-async-test module, which is provided as a git submodule. This has to be initialized once using:

git submodule update --init

Running all unit tests:

node test/AllTests.js

The test classes can also be run separately. This will e.g. run the UserApi test:

node test/UserApiTest.js

Note that a connection to the internet is required to run the tests.

TODO

• port to CommonJS (this should be easy because only the 'doSend' method is node specific)
• API docs
  • fix and polish (there might still be some PHP-isms)
  • generate API documentation
• Documentation

LICENSE

MIT license. See the LICENSE file for details.

Credits

Thanks to Thibault Duplessis for the excellent php-github-api library, which is the blueprint of this library. Especially the unit tests proved to be very helpful.