Session: GitHub API 101 with Python and Jupyter Notebooks

The GitHub APIs are powerful tools for accessing data about your open source projects, and they are easier to use than many people realize. While you can perform data analysis that requires advanced skills, you can also gather some very useful information quickly and easily with just a bit of knowledge about the API and some basic Python programming skills. The talk assumes that audience members have already installed and used Jupyter Notebooks and Python. Since this is an introductory 101 talk, the focus will be on the GitHub REST API (v3), but the GraphQL API (v4) will also be discussed.

This talk will use Jupyter Notebooks and Python to cover:

  • Getting started: documentation, authentication, personal access tokens, and ethical use
  • Demo: gathering data about users (employer, email, orgs, bio, type, …)
  • Demo: getting data about organizations (description, creation date, …
  • Demo: accessing data about repositories (last updated, open issues / PRs, license, …)
  • Pros and cons of using the REST API and the GraphQL API with a simple GraphQL demo.

The audience will walk away with an understanding of how to use the GitHub API to gather some basic information along with the link to a GitHub repository containing the notebooks, demos, and other materials from the session.

Presenters:

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