Scripting with the REST API and Ruby

Learn how to write a script using the Octokit.rb SDK to interact with the REST API.

In this article

About Octokit.rb

If you want to write a script using Ruby to interact with the GitHub REST API, GitHub recommends that you use the Octokit.rb SDK. Octokit.rb is maintained by GitHub. The SDK implements best practices and makes it easier for you to interact with the REST API via Ruby. Octokit.rb works with all modern browsers, Node.rb, and Deno. For more information about Octokit.rb, see the Octokit.rb README.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes that you are familiar with Ruby and the GitHub REST API. For more information about the REST API, see "Getting started with the REST API."

You must install and import the octokit gem in order to use the Octokit.rb library. This guide uses import statements in accordance with Ruby's conventions. For more information about different installation methods, see the Octokit.rb README's Installation section.

Instantiating and authenticating

Warning: Treat your authentication credentials like a password.

To keep your credentials secure, you can store your credentials as a secret and run your script through GitHub Actions. For more information, see "Using secrets in GitHub Actions."

You can also store your credentials as a Codespaces secret and run your script in Codespaces. For more information, see "Managing your account-specific secrets for GitHub Codespaces."

If these options are not possible, consider using another CLI service to store your credentials securely.

Authenticating with a personal access token

If you want to use the GitHub REST API for personal use, you can create a personal access token. For more information about creating a personal access token, see "Managing your personal access tokens."

First, require the octokit library. Then, create an instance of Octokit by passing your personal access token as the access_token option. In the following example, replace YOUR-TOKEN with your personal access token.

Ruby
require 'octokit'

octokit = Octokit::Client.new(access_token: 'YOUR-TOKEN')

Authenticating with a GitHub App

If you want to use the API on behalf of an organization or another user, GitHub recommends that you use a GitHub App. If an endpoint is available to GitHub Apps, the REST reference documentation for that endpoint will indicate what type of GitHub App token is required. For more information, see "Registering a GitHub App" and "About authentication with a GitHub App."

Instead of requiring octokit, create an instance of Octokit::Client by passing your GitHub App's information as options. In the following example, replace APP_ID with your app's ID, PRIVATE_KEY with your app's private key, and INSTALLATION_ID with the ID of the installation of your app that you want to authenticate on behalf of. You can find your app's ID and generate a private key on the settings page for your app. For more information, see "Managing private keys for GitHub Apps." You can get an installation ID with the GET /users/{username}/installation, GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/installation, or GET /orgs/{org}/installation endpoints. For more information, see "REST API endpoints for GitHub Apps."

Ruby
require 'octokit'

app = Octokit::Client.new(
  client_id: APP_ID,
  client_secret: PRIVATE_KEY,
  installation_id: INSTALLATION_ID
)

octokit = Octokit::Client.new(bearer_token: app.create_app_installation.access_token)

Authenticating in GitHub Actions

If you want to use the API in a GitHub Actions workflow, GitHub recommends that you authenticate with the built-in GITHUB_TOKEN instead of creating a token. You can grant permissions to the GITHUB_TOKEN with the permissions key. For more information about GITHUB_TOKEN, see "Automatic token authentication."

If your workflow needs to access resources outside of the workflow's repository, then you will not be able to use GITHUB_TOKEN. In that case, store your credentials as a secret and replace GITHUB_TOKEN in the examples below with the name of your secret. For more information about secrets, see "Using secrets in GitHub Actions."

If you use the run keyword to execute your Ruby script in your GitHub Actions workflows, you can store the value of GITHUB_TOKEN as an environment variable. Your script can access the environment variable as ENV['VARIABLE_NAME'].

For example, this workflow step stores GITHUB_TOKEN in an environment variable called TOKEN:

- name: Run script
  env:
    TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
  run: |
    ruby .github/actions-scripts/use-the-api.rb

The script that the workflow runs uses ENV['TOKEN'] to authenticate:

Ruby
require 'octokit'

octokit = Octokit::Client.new(access_token: ENV['TOKEN'])

Instantiating without authentication

You can use the REST API without authentication, although you will have a lower rate limit and will not be able to use some endpoints. To create an instance of Octokit without authenticating, do not pass the access_token option.

Ruby
require 'octokit'

octokit = Octokit::Client.new

Making requests

Octokit supports multiple ways of making requests. You can use the request method to make requests if you know the HTTP verb and path for the endpoint. You can use the rest method if you want to take advantage of autocompletion in your IDE and typing. For paginated endpoints, you can use the paginate method to request multiple pages of data.

Using the request method to make requests

To use the request method to make requests, pass the HTTP method and path as the first argument. Pass any body, query, or path parameters in a hash as the second argument. For example, to make a GET request to /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues and pass the owner, repo, and per_page parameters:

Ruby
octokit.request("GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues", owner: "github", repo: "docs", per_page: 2)

The request method automatically passes the Accept: application/vnd.github+json header. To pass additional headers or a different Accept header, add a headers option to the hash that is passed as a second argument. The value of the headers option is a hash with the header names as keys and header values as values. For example, to send a content-type header with a value of text/plain:

Ruby
octokit.request("POST /markdown/raw", text: "Hello **world**", headers: { "content-type" => "text/plain" })

Using rest endpoint methods to make requests

Every REST API endpoint has an associated rest endpoint method in Octokit. These methods generally autocomplete in your IDE for convenience. You can pass any parameters as a hash to the method.

Ruby
octokit.rest.issues.list_for_repo(owner: "github", repo: "docs", per_page: 2)

Making paginated requests

If the endpoint is paginated and you want to fetch more than one page of results, you can use the paginate method. paginate will fetch the next page of results until it reaches the last page and then return all of the results as an array. A few endpoints return paginated results as an array in an object, as opposed to returning the paginated results as an array. paginate always returns an array of items even if the raw result was an object.

For example, the following example gets all of the issues from the github/docs repository. Although it requests 100 issues at a time, the function won't return until the last page of data is reached.

Ruby
issue_data = octokit.paginate("GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues", owner: "github", repo: "docs", per_page: 100)

The paginate method accepts an optional block, which you can use to process each page of results. This allows you to collect only the data that you want from the response. For example, the following example continues to fetch results until an issue that includes "test" in the title is returned. For the pages of data that were returned, only the issue title and author are stored.

Ruby
issue_data = octokit.paginate("GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues", owner: "github", repo: "docs", per_page: 100) do |response, done|
  response.data.map do |issue|
    if issue.title.include?("test")
      done.call
    end
    { title: issue.title, author: issue.user.login }
  end
end

Instead of fetching all of the results at once, you can use octokit.paginate.iterator() to iterate through a single page at a time. For example, the following example fetches one page of results at a time and processes each object from the page before fetching the next page. Once an issue that includes "test" in the title is reached, the script stops the iteration and returns the issue title and issue author of each object that was processed. The iterator is the most memory-efficient method for fetching paginated data.

Ruby
iterator = octokit.paginate.iterator("GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues", owner: "github", repo: "docs", per_page: 100)
issue_data = []
break_loop = false
iterator.each do |data|
  break if break_loop
  data.each do |issue|
    if issue.title.include?("test")
      break_loop = true
      break
    else
      issue_data << { title: issue.title, author: issue.user.login }
    end
  end
end

You can use the paginate method with the rest endpoint methods as well. Pass the rest endpoint method as the first argument and any parameters as the second argument.

Ruby
iterator = octokit.paginate.iterator(octokit.rest.issues.list_for_repo, owner: "github", repo: "docs", per_page: 100)

For more information about pagination, see "Using pagination in the REST API."

Catching errors

Catching all errors

Sometimes, the GitHub REST API will return an error. For example, you will get an error if your access token is expired or if you omitted a required parameter. Octokit.rb automatically retries the request when it gets an error other than 400 Bad Request, 401 Unauthorized, 403 Forbidden, 404 Not Found, and 422 Unprocessable Entity. If an API error occurs even after retries, Octokit.rb throws an error that includes the HTTP status code of the response (response.status) and the response headers (response.headers). You should handle these errors in your code. For example, you can use a try/catch block to catch errors:

Ruby
begin
files_changed = []

iterator = octokit.paginate.iterator("GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/{pull_number}/files", owner: "github", repo: "docs", pull_number: 22809, per_page: 100)
iterator.each do | data |
    files_changed.concat(data.map {
      | file_data | file_data.filename
    })
  end
rescue Octokit::Error => error
if error.response
puts "Error! Status: #{error.response.status}. Message: #{error.response.data.message}"
end
puts error
end

Handling intended error codes

Sometimes, GitHub uses a 4xx status code to indicate a non-error response. If the endpoint you are using does this, you can add additional handling for specific errors. For example, the GET /user/starred/{owner}/{repo} endpoint will return a 404 if the repository is not starred. The following example uses the 404 response to indicate that the repository was not starred; all other error codes are treated as errors.

Ruby
begin
octokit.request("GET /user/starred/{owner}/{repo}", owner: "github", repo: "docs")
puts "The repository is starred by me"
rescue Octokit::NotFound => error
puts "The repository is not starred by me"
rescue Octokit::Error => error
puts "An error occurred while checking if the repository is starred: #{error&.response&.data&.message}"
end

Handling rate limit errors

If you receive a rate limit error, you may want to retry your request after waiting. When you are rate limited, GitHub responds with a 403 Forbidden error, and the x-ratelimit-remaining response header value will be "0". The response headers will include a x-ratelimit-reset header, which tells you the time at which the current rate limit window resets, in UTC epoch seconds. You can retry your request after the time specified by x-ratelimit-reset.

Ruby
def request_retry(route, parameters)
 begin
 response = octokit.request(route, parameters)
 return response
 rescue Octokit::RateLimitExceeded => error
 reset_time_epoch_seconds = error.response.headers['x-ratelimit-reset'].to_i
 current_time_epoch_seconds = Time.now.to_i
 seconds_to_wait = reset_time_epoch_seconds - current_time_epoch_seconds
 puts "You have exceeded your rate limit. Retrying in #{seconds_to_wait} seconds."
 sleep(seconds_to_wait)
 retry
 rescue Octokit::Error => error
 puts error
 end
 end

 response = request_retry("GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues", owner: "github", repo: "docs", per_page: 2)

Using the response

The request method returns a response object if the request was successful. The response object contains data (the response body returned by the endpoint), status (the HTTP response code), url (the URL of the request), and headers (a hash containing the response headers). Unless otherwise specified, the response body is in JSON format. Some endpoints do not return a response body; in those cases, the data property is omitted.

Ruby
response = octokit.request("GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{issue_number}", owner: "github", repo: "docs", issue_number: 11901)
 puts "The status of the response is: #{response.status}"
 puts "The request URL was: #{response.url}"
 puts "The x-ratelimit-remaining response header is: #{response.headers['x-ratelimit-remaining']}"
 puts "The issue title is: #{response.data['title']}"

Similarly, the paginate method returns a response object. If the request was successful, the response object contains data, status, url, and headers.

Ruby
response = octokit.paginate("GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues", owner: "github", repo: "docs", per_page: 100)
puts "#{response.data.length} issues were returned"
puts "The title of the first issue is: #{response.data[0]['title']}"

Example script

Here is a full example script that uses Octokit.rb. The script imports Octokit and creates a new instance of Octokit. If you want to authenticate with a GitHub App instead of a personal access token, you would import and instantiate App instead of Octokit. For more information, see "Authenticating with a GitHub App" in this guide.

The get_changed_files function gets all of the files changed for a pull request. The comment_if_data_files_changed function calls the get_changed_files function. If any of the files that the pull request changed include /data/ in the file path, then the function will comment on the pull request.

Ruby
require "octokit"

 octokit = Octokit::Client.new(access_token: "YOUR-TOKEN")

 def get_changed_files(octokit, owner, repo, pull_number)
 files_changed = []

 begin
 iterator = octokit.paginate.iterator("GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/{pull_number}/files", owner: owner, repo: repo, pull_number: pull_number, per_page: 100)
 iterator.each do | data |
     files_changed.concat(data.map {
       | file_data | file_data.filename
     })
   end
 rescue Octokit::Error => error
 if error.response
 puts "Error! Status: #{error.response.status}. Message: #{error.response.data.message}"
 end
 puts error
 end

 files_changed
 end

 def comment_if_data_files_changed(octokit, owner, repo, pull_number)
 changed_files = get_changed_files(octokit, owner, repo, pull_number)

 if changed_files.any ? {
   | file_name | /\/data\//i.match ? (file_name)
 }
 begin
 comment = octokit.create_pull_request_review_comment(owner, repo, pull_number, "It looks like you changed a data file. These files are auto-generated. \n\nYou must revert any changes to data files before your pull request will be reviewed.")
 comment.html_url
 rescue Octokit::Error => error
 if error.response
 puts "Error! Status: #{error.response.status}. Message: #{error.response.data.message}"
 end
 puts error
 end
 end
 end

# Example usage
owner = "github"
repo = "docs"
pull_number = 22809
comment_url = comment_if_data_files_changed(octokit, owner, repo, pull_number)

puts "A comment was added to the pull request: #{comment_url}"

Note: This is just a basic example. In practice, you may want to use error handling and conditional checks to handle various scenarios.

Next steps

To learn more about working with the GitHub REST API and Octokit.rb, explore the following resources: