CODEWITHSUNDEEP
githubgithub-api
poussma
poussma

Reputation: 7301

How to get original forked repository with the github api?

I am wondering how to get the original repository from my forked repositories.

I am using https://api.github.com/users/:user/repos?type=forks to get the list of forked repositories. It returns various links on the forks, but I cannot find how to get the original repository.

Any idea ?

Note: something else that looping over https://api.github.com/users/:user/events

Upvotes: 10

Views: 1905

Answers (2)

Will Madden
Will Madden

Reputation: 6945

This is actually much easier to do with the GraphQL API. For example, this is how you query for a list of your own repos showing their name, whether they're a fork and their parent repo URL. You can paste it as-is into the GraphQL Explorer

query {
  viewer {
    repositories(first:10) {
      nodes {
        name,
        isFork,
        parent {
          url
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Output

{
  "data": {
    "viewer": {
      "repositories": {
        "nodes": [
          {
            "name": "cucumber",
            "isFork": true,
            "parent": {
              "url": "https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-ruby"
            }
          },
          ...
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

The parent.url is the URL of the original repo the fork was cloned from.

Upvotes: 0

tmarwen
tmarwen

Reputation: 16354

You can load a list of the forked repositories using just the endpoint you mentioned:

curl https://api.github.com/users/:user/repos?type=forks

which will return something like the following JSON feed (irrelevant informations omitted):

[
  {
    "id": 24328834,
    "name": "repo_name",
    "full_name": ":user/repo_name",
    "owner": {
    }
    ...
    "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/:user/repo_name",
    ...
  }
  {
    "id": 24328835,
    "name": "repo_name_2",
    "full_name": ":user/repo_name_2",
    "owner": {
      ...
    }
    ...
    "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/:user/repo_name_2"
    ...
  }
]

EDITED based on @jasonrudolph suggestions

Then, out from the list returned, you pull out the repo_name under the name element key and use it to construct the repository url, or just refer to the url element to issue a GET request against as follows:

curl https://api.github.com/repos/:user/repo_name

that in return will give you the requested user repository informations (note that is the simplest of queried urls) from which you can retrieve:

  • The parent JSON element that holds the repository, from which the issued one was forked, informations including its id / name / url...
  • The source JSON element which holds the original repository information, in case the issued repository is a fork of another fork.

Something like the following (here the parent is nothing but the source, i.e. the repository was forked from the original one):

{
  "id": 24328834,
  "name": "repo_name",
  "full_name": "user/repo_name",
  "owner": {
    ...
  },
  ...
  "parent": {
    "id": 354448,
    "name": "repo_name",
    "full_name": "real_owner_name/repo_name",
    "owner": {
      ...
    }
  }
  "source": {
    "id": 354448,
    "name": "repo_name",
    "full_name": "real_owner_name/repo_name",
    "owner": {
      ...
    }
  }
}

Upvotes: 8

Related Questions