Everything You Never Wanted To Know About The GitHub API

A crash course on the traps, gotchas, and common mistakes for new users of the GitHub API. If you use GitHub and are interested in automation, let me show you all the mistakes I made so you don’t have to make them. I have written multiple GitHub services and have experience with all of the different API versions and the different application types.

We’ll be talking about life’s essential questions, such as:

  • Should I use the REST API or the GraphQL API?
  • Should I write an OAuth app, a GitHub app, or a GitHub action?
  • Is it worth it? What functionality can I build using the GitHub API?
  • Known bugs^D^D^D features of the API.

The GitHub API has over 500 endpoints and is over 8 years old. GitHub has over 30 million users, 50 million repositories, and 100 million pull requests. What lessons can we learn from this API when writing our own APIs?

Video

Speaker

michael-spiegel

Michael Spiegel

 
Michael Spiegel is currently a lead research engineer at Two Six Labs, where he develops security solutions for mobile and embedded systems. Before joining Two Six Labs, Michael was a member of the ...