github api: How to efficiently find the number of commits for a repository?

Question

I want to find the number of commits done to specific github projects, and within them to specific files. I checked the github api docs but only found an API for actually returning all commits. This would be very inefficient since I have to do multiple api calls for paging thru all commits.

Anyone has a better idea?

@drorw Hello, may you please tell me how you integrated the access token? — user6456773, Sep 14 '16 at 14:51

VonC · Accepted Answer · 2018-04-06T07:10:55.970

12

Update May 2013: see "File CRUD and repository statistics now available in the API"

You now can Get the last year of commit activity data

GET /repos/:owner/:repo/stats/commit_activity

Returns the last year of commit activity grouped by week. The days array is a group of commits per day, starting on Sunday.

Not completely what you are looking for, but closer.

Original answer (April 2010)

No, the current API doesn't support a 'log --all' for listing all commmits from all branches.

The only alternative is presented in "Github API: Retrieve all commits for all branches for a repo", and list through all pages of all commits, branch after branch.

This seems so cumbersome than another alternative would actually to clone the Github repo and apply git commands on that local clone!
(mainly git shortlog)

Note: you can also checkout that python script created by Arcsector.

edited Apr 06 '18 at 07:10

answered Apr 10 '13 at 07:36

VonC

1,042,979
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2

@drorw If you have specific suggestions or feature requests regarding the API, you should e-mail GitHub support and let them know: https://github.com/contact – Ivan Zuzak Apr 10 '13 at 09:40
Do you know if it's possible to get more than a year? – grepsedawk Jan 04 '16 at 06:04
@Pachonk No: I suppose the github support would though. – VonC Jan 04 '16 at 06:17

Bertrand Martel · Answer 2 · 2017-11-27T02:32:08.257

With GraphQL API v4, you can get total commit count per branch with totalCount for each branch:

{
  repository(owner: "google", name: "gson") {
    name
    refs(first: 100, refPrefix: "refs/heads/") {
      edges {
        node {
          name
          target {
            ... on Commit {
              id
              history(first: 0) {
                totalCount
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Test it in the explorer

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 01 '20 at 18:12

Pure JS Implementation

const base_url = 'https://api.github.com';

    function httpGet(theUrl, return_headers) {
        var xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
        xmlHttp.open("GET", theUrl, false); // false for synchronous request
        xmlHttp.send(null);
        if (return_headers) {
            return xmlHttp
        }
        return xmlHttp.responseText;
    }

    function get_all_commits_count(owner, repo, sha) {
        let first_commit = get_first_commit(owner, repo);
        let compare_url = base_url + '/repos/' + owner + '/' + repo + '/compare/' + first_commit + '...' + sha;
        let commit_req = httpGet(compare_url);
        let commit_count = JSON.parse(commit_req)['total_commits'] + 1;
        console.log('Commit Count: ', commit_count);
        return commit_count
    }

    function get_first_commit(owner, repo) {
        let url = base_url + '/repos/' + owner + '/' + repo + '/commits';
        let req = httpGet(url, true);
        let first_commit_hash = '';
        if (req.getResponseHeader('Link')) {
            let page_url = req.getResponseHeader('Link').split(',')[1].split(';')[0].split('<')[1].split('>')[0];
            let req_last_commit = httpGet(page_url);
            let first_commit = JSON.parse(req_last_commit);
            first_commit_hash = first_commit[first_commit.length - 1]['sha']
        } else {
            let first_commit = JSON.parse(req.responseText);
            first_commit_hash = first_commit[first_commit.length - 1]['sha'];
        }
        return first_commit_hash;
    }

    let owner = 'getredash';
    let repo = 'redash';
    let sha = 'master';
    get_all_commits_count(owner, repo, sha);

Credits - https://gist.github.com/yershalom/a7c08f9441d1aadb13777bce4c7cdc3b

github api: How to efficiently find the number of commits for a repository?

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