Efficiently retrieving stats for all GitHub Commits

Question

Is there a more efficient way of getting the count of additions/deletions related to a commit than looping through every single commit and calling the:

GET /repos/:owner/:repo/commits/:sha

(https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/commits/)

Just to get the:

"stats": {
   "additions": 104,
   "deletions": 4,
   "total": 108
},

Data?

Unfortunately the commits endpoint:

GET /repos/:owner/:repo/commits

Contains a lot of data about each commit but not this detail which means a huge number of additional API calls to get it.

VonC · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-20 21:42:54Z

4

Whenever you need multiple GitHub API query, check if GraphQL (introduced by GitHub last Sept. 2016) could allow you to get all those commits in one query.

You can see examples here and apply to GitHub GraphQL early access, but that sees to be the only way to get:

all stats from all commits (and only the stats)
in one query

answered Nov 20, 2016 at 21:42

VonC

1.4m568 gold badges4.8k silver badges5.7k bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

chrisb Over a year ago

VonC thanks - I will take a look, but it looks like it is in preview and we really need something which is in production I think. I am still assuming then that this is not possible with the current GitHub API.

VonC Over a year ago

@chrisb Yes, it does not seem possible at the moment with the current GitHub API indeed.

Bertrand Martel · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-14 21:37:16Z

It is now possible to get commit stats (additions, deletions & changedFiles count) using the GraphQL API :

To get commit stats for the 100 first commit on the default branch :

{
  repository(owner: "google", name: "gson") {
    defaultBranchRef {
      name
      target {
        ... on Commit {
          id
          history(first: 100) {
            nodes {
              oid
              message
              additions
              deletions
              changedFiles
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Try it in the explorer

To get commit stats for the first 10 branches, for the 100 first commits of each one of these branches:

{
  repository(owner: "google", name: "gson") {
    refs(first: 10, refPrefix: "refs/heads/") {
      edges {
        node {
          name
          target {
            ... on Commit {
              id
              history(first: 100) {
                nodes {
                  oid
                  message
                  additions
                  deletions
                  changedFiles
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Try it in the explorer

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Efficiently retrieving stats for all GitHub Commits

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Linked

Related