Most suitable python library for Github API v3
Question:
I am looking for a python library for the Github APIv3 suitable for me.
I found one library (python-github3) mentioned in the GH API docs. After playing around with it in ipython for an hour or two, I found it really unintuitive to explore/work with. I looked some more, and found there’s quite a number of people at least attempting to write such a library. The more promising-looking (at a glance) are PyGithub and another python-github3, which apparently is different from the first one.
Before I spend the next days consecutively trying out library after library, I wanted to ask the SO community if there is an accepted, definitive, obvious choice for that library?
What I didn’t like about the first library was the (to me) unintuitive way to get at data – some things you get as attributes, some you get as return value of a method, that return value is some complicated object which has to be paged and iterated through, etc.
In that regard, PyGithub looks more attractive at first glance – clearly drill down through an object hierarchy, and then arrive at the attribute containing what you want:
for repo in g.get_user().get_repos():
print repo.name
So, any pearls of wisdom to share? I know I don’t have skills enough to quickly judge library quality, which is why I’m turning to the SO community.
edit: fwiw, I ended up using PyGithub. It works well, and the author is really receptive for feedback and bug reports. 🙂
Answers:
Since you mentioned you are a beginner python programmer, I would suggest you to try to use the JSON API without any Github library first. It really isn’t that difficult and it will help you a lot later in your programming life since same approach can be applied to any JSON API. Especially if it seems that trying out libraries will take days.
I’m not saying that some library isn’t easier to use, I’m just saying the small extra effort to use the API directly might be worth it in the long run. At least it will help you understand why some of those libraries seem “unintuitive” (as you said).
Simple example to fetch creation time of django repository:
import requests
import json
r = requests.get('https://api.github.com/repos/django/django')
if(r.ok):
repoItem = json.loads(r.text or r.content)
print "Django repository created: " + repoItem['created_at']
This is using the popular requests library. In your code you’ll naturally need to handle the error cases too.
If you need access with authentication it will be a bit more complex.
In the end, I ended up using PyGithub. It works well, and the author is really receptive for feedback and bug reports. 🙂
(Adapted from my edit to the original question, for better visibility)
Documentation is horrible for PyGitHub, but the product is great. Here is a quick sample for actually retrieving a file, changing it with a new comment at the beginning of the file and committing it back
from github import Github
gh = Github(login_or_token='.....', base_url='...../api/v3')
user = gh.get_user()
repo = user.get_repo("RepoName")
file = repo.get_file_contents("/App/forms.py")
decoded_content = "# Test " + "rn" + file.decoded_content
repo.update_file("/"RepoName"/forms.py", "Commit Comments", decoded_content, file.sha)
I am looking for a python library for the Github APIv3 suitable for me.
I found one library (python-github3) mentioned in the GH API docs. After playing around with it in ipython for an hour or two, I found it really unintuitive to explore/work with. I looked some more, and found there’s quite a number of people at least attempting to write such a library. The more promising-looking (at a glance) are PyGithub and another python-github3, which apparently is different from the first one.
Before I spend the next days consecutively trying out library after library, I wanted to ask the SO community if there is an accepted, definitive, obvious choice for that library?
What I didn’t like about the first library was the (to me) unintuitive way to get at data – some things you get as attributes, some you get as return value of a method, that return value is some complicated object which has to be paged and iterated through, etc.
In that regard, PyGithub looks more attractive at first glance – clearly drill down through an object hierarchy, and then arrive at the attribute containing what you want:
for repo in g.get_user().get_repos():
print repo.name
So, any pearls of wisdom to share? I know I don’t have skills enough to quickly judge library quality, which is why I’m turning to the SO community.
edit: fwiw, I ended up using PyGithub. It works well, and the author is really receptive for feedback and bug reports. 🙂
Since you mentioned you are a beginner python programmer, I would suggest you to try to use the JSON API without any Github library first. It really isn’t that difficult and it will help you a lot later in your programming life since same approach can be applied to any JSON API. Especially if it seems that trying out libraries will take days.
I’m not saying that some library isn’t easier to use, I’m just saying the small extra effort to use the API directly might be worth it in the long run. At least it will help you understand why some of those libraries seem “unintuitive” (as you said).
Simple example to fetch creation time of django repository:
import requests
import json
r = requests.get('https://api.github.com/repos/django/django')
if(r.ok):
repoItem = json.loads(r.text or r.content)
print "Django repository created: " + repoItem['created_at']
This is using the popular requests library. In your code you’ll naturally need to handle the error cases too.
If you need access with authentication it will be a bit more complex.
In the end, I ended up using PyGithub. It works well, and the author is really receptive for feedback and bug reports. 🙂
(Adapted from my edit to the original question, for better visibility)
Documentation is horrible for PyGitHub, but the product is great. Here is a quick sample for actually retrieving a file, changing it with a new comment at the beginning of the file and committing it back
from github import Github
gh = Github(login_or_token='.....', base_url='...../api/v3')
user = gh.get_user()
repo = user.get_repo("RepoName")
file = repo.get_file_contents("/App/forms.py")
decoded_content = "# Test " + "rn" + file.decoded_content
repo.update_file("/"RepoName"/forms.py", "Commit Comments", decoded_content, file.sha)