GitHub REST API

What it covers

GitHub’s official REST surface for repositories, collaboration, Actions, Git data, and account resources. The profile stays deliberately concise: use the linked official reference for endpoint schemas and current commercial terms.

Integration notes

Authenticate exactly as the provider documents, keep credentials out of client bundles, and retain upstream request identifiers when available. Pagination, retries, caching, and webhook verification should be implemented per product rather than inferred from another API.

Key endpoints

Endpoint	Description
GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}	Repository details
GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues	List issues
POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues	Create issue
GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls	List pull requests
GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/contents/{path}	File contents
GET /users/{username}	User profile
GET /search/repositories	Search repositories
GET /rate_limit	Rate limit status

Decision notes

Best suited to repository automation and pull-request and issue integrations. Before production, verify use fine-grained permissions. respect secondary limits and conditional requests. Mutable limits, prices, and versions were checked on 2026-09-13 and should be rechecked at purchase or deployment time.

Python example: repo info and issues

import httpx

TOKEN = "your_github_token"  # fine-grained PAT recommended
BASE = "https://api.github.com"
HEADERS = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {TOKEN}",
    "Accept": "application/vnd.github+json",
    "X-GitHub-Api-Version": "2022-11-28",
}

def get_repo(owner: str, repo: str) -> dict:
    resp = httpx.get(f"{BASE}/repos/{owner}/{repo}", headers=HEADERS, timeout=30)
    if resp.status_code == 404:
        raise ValueError("Repo not found or no access")
    resp.raise_for_status()
    return resp.json()

def list_issues(owner: str, repo: str, state: str = "open", per_page: int = 30) -> list[dict]:
    """List issues. Paginate via the Link header for more pages."""
    resp = httpx.get(
        f"{BASE}/repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues",
        headers=HEADERS,
        params={"state": state, "per_page": per_page},
        timeout=30,
    )
    if resp.status_code == 403 and "rate limit" in resp.text.lower():
        reset = resp.headers.get("x-ratelimit-reset", "?")
        raise RuntimeError(f"Rate limited until epoch {reset}")
    resp.raise_for_status()
    return resp.json()

repo = get_repo("firewine", "api-atlas")
print(repo["full_name"], "stars:", repo["stargazers_count"])

Notes:

• Send X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2022-11-28; unauthenticated calls get 60 req/hour, authed 5000
• Watch x-ratelimit-remaining / x-ratelimit-reset headers; secondary limits can 403 bursts
• Pagination uses the Link header (rel="next"); don’t guess page counts
• Prefer fine-grained PATs with minimal repo scopes over classic tokens