go-github

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

go-github tracks Go's version support policy supporting any minor version of the latest two major releases of Go and the go directive in go.mod reflects that. We do our best not to break older versions of Go if we don't have to, but we don't explicitly test older versions and as of Go 1.23 the go directive in go.mod declares a hard required minimum version of Go to use with this module and this must be greater than or equal to the go line of all dependencies so go-github will require the N-1 major release of Go by default.

Development

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

Installation

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

go get github.com/google/go-github/v89

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/v89/github"

and run go 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/v89@master

To discover all the changes that have occurred since a prior release, you can first clone the repo, then run (for example):

go run tools/gen-release-notes/main.go --tag v89.0.0

Usage

import "github.com/google/go-github/v89/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, err := github.NewClient()
if err != nil {
    // Handle error.
}

// 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, err := github.NewClient()
if err != nil {
    // Handle error.
}

// 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.

NOTE: Using the context package, one can easily pass cancellation 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

Use the github.WithAuthToken options method to configure your client to authenticate using an OAuth token (for example, a [personal access token][]). This is what is needed for a majority of use cases aside from GitHub Apps.

client, err := github.NewClient(github.WithAuthToken("... your access token ..."))
if err != nil {
    // Handle error.
}

To support more advanced use cases; you can use the github.WithTransport option to provide a custom http.RoundTripper that handles authentication for you, or the github.WithHTTPClient option to provide a custom http.Client. As an example; you can use the oauth2.Transport from the golang.org/x/oauth2 package to handle OAuth token refreshing for you.

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.

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

As a GitHub App

GitHub Apps authentication can be provided by different pkgs like bradleyfalzon/ghinstallation or jferrl/go-githubauth.

Note: Most endpoints (ex. GET /rate_limit) require access token authentication while a few others (ex. GET /app/hook/deliveries) require JWT authentication.

ghinstallation provides Transport, which implements http.RoundTripper to provide authentication as an installation for GitHub Apps.

Here is an example of how to authenticate as a GitHub App using the ghinstallation package:

import (
    "net/http"

    "github.com/bradleyfalzon/ghinstallation/v2"
    "github.com/google/go-github/v89/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")

    // Or for endpoints that require JWT authentication
    // itr, err := ghinstallation.NewAppsTransportKeyFromFile(http.DefaultTransport, 1, "2016-10-19.private-key.pem")

    if err != nil {
        // Handle error.
    }

    // Use installation transport with client.
    client, err := github.NewClient(github.WithTransport(itr))
    if err != nil {
        // Handle error.
    }

    // Use client...
}

go-githubauth implements a set of oauth2.TokenSource to be used with oauth2.Client. An oauth2.Client can be injected into the github.Client to authenticate requests.

Another example using go-githubauth:

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "os"
    "strconv"

    "github.com/google/go-github/v89/github"
    "github.com/jferrl/go-githubauth"
    "golang.org/x/oauth2"
)

func main() {
    privateKey := []byte(os.Getenv("GITHUB_APP_PRIVATE_KEY"))

    appTokenSource, err := githubauth.NewApplicationTokenSource(1112, privateKey)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println("Error creating application token source:", err)
        return
     }

    installationTokenSource := githubauth.NewInstallationTokenSource(1113, appTokenSource)

    // oauth2.NewClient uses oauth2.ReuseTokenSource to reuse the token until it expires.
    // The token will be automatically refreshed when it expires.
    // InstallationTokenSource has the mechanism to refresh the token when it expires.
    httpClient := oauth2.NewClient(context.Background(), installationTokenSource)

    client, err := github.NewClient(github.WithHTTPClient(httpClient))
    if err != nil {
        // Handle error.
    }
}

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

Rate Limiting

GitHub imposes rate limits on all API clients. The primary rate limit is the limit to the number of REST API requests that a client can make within a specific amount of time. This limit helps prevent abuse and denial-of-service attacks, and ensures that the API remains available for all users. Some endpoints, like the search endpoints, have more restrictive limits. Unauthenticated clients may request public data but have a low rate limit, while authenticated clients have rate limits based on the client identity.

In addition to primary rate limits, GitHub enforces secondary rate limits in order to prevent abuse and keep the API available for all users. Secondary rate limits generally limit the number of concurrent requests that a client can make.

The client 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 the client RateLimits service to fetch the most up-to-date rate limit data for the client.

To detect a primary API rate limit error, you can check if the error is a RateLimitError.

repos, _, err := client.Repositories.List(ctx, "", nil)
var rateErr *github.RateLimitError
if errors.As(err, &rateErr) {
    log.Printf("hit primary rate limit, used %v of %v\n", rateErr.Rate.Used, rateErr.Rate.Limit)
}

To detect an API secondary rate limit error, you can check if the error is an AbuseRateLimitError.

repos, _, err := client.Repositories.List(ctx, "", nil)
var rateErr *github.AbuseRateLimitError
if errors.As(err, &rateErr) {
    log.Printf("hit secondary rate limit, retry after %v\n", rateErr.RetryAfter)
}

If you hit the primary rate limit, you can use the SleepUntilPrimaryRateLimitResetWhenRateLimited method to block until the rate limit is reset.

repos, _, err := client.Repositories.List(context.WithValue(ctx, github.SleepUntilPrimaryRateLimitResetWhenRateLimited, true), "", nil)

If you need to make a request even if the rate limit has been hit you can use the BypassRateLimitCheck method to bypass the rate limit check and make the request anyway.

repos, _, err := client.Repositories.List(context.WithValue(ctx, github.BypassRateLimitCheck, true), "", nil)

For more advanced use cases, you can use gofri/go-github-ratelimit which provides a middleware (http.RoundTripper) that handles both the primary rate limit and secondary rate limit for the GitHub API. In this case you can set the client DisableRateLimitCheck to true so the client doesn't track the rate limit usage.

If the client is an OAuth app you can use the apps higher rate limit to request public data by using the UnauthenticatedRateLimitedTransport to make calls as the app instead of as the user.

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 errors.As(err, new(*github.AcceptedError)) {
    log.Println("scheduled on GitHub side")
}

Conditional Requests

The GitHub REST API has good support for conditional HTTP requests via the ETag header 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.

Typically, an RFC 9111 compliant HTTP cache such as bartventer/httpcache is recommended, ex:

import (
    "github.com/bartventer/httpcache"
    _ "github.com/bartventer/httpcache/store/memcache" // Register the in-memory backend
)

client, err := github.NewClient(github.WithHTTPClient(httpcache.NewClient("memcache://")), github.WithAuthToken(os.Getenv("GITHUB_TOKEN")))
if err != nil {
    // Handle error.
}

Alternatively, the bored-engineer/github-conditional-http-transport package relies on (undocumented) GitHub specific cache logic and is recommended when making requests using short-lived credentials such as a GitHub App installation token.

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.Ptr("foo"),
    Private: github.Ptr(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 using page numbers 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, err := github.NewClient()
if err != nil {
    // Handle error.
}

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
}

Pagination options using string cursors are described in the github.ListCursorOptions struct and passed to the list methods directly or as an embedded type of a more specific list cursor options struct (for example github.ListGlobalSecurityAdvisoriesOptions). Similarly,