Resources in the REST API

Schema

The API is accessed from http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3. All data is sent and received as JSON.

$ curl -I http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/users/octocat/orgs

> HTTP/2 200
> Server: nginx
> Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:33:14 GMT
> Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
> ETag: "a00049ba79152d03380c34652f2cb612"
> X-GitHub-Media-Type: github.v3
> x-ratelimit-limit: 5000
> x-ratelimit-remaining: 4987
> x-ratelimit-reset: 1350085394
> X-GitHub-Enterprise-Version: 3.7.0
> Content-Length: 5
> Cache-Control: max-age=0, private, must-revalidate
> X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff

Blank fields are included as null instead of being omitted.

All timestamps return in UTC time, ISO 8601 format:

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ

For more information about timezones in timestamps, see this section.

Summary representations

When you fetch a list of resources, the response includes a subset of the attributes for that resource. This is the "summary" representation of the resource. (Some attributes are computationally expensive for the API to provide. For performance reasons, the summary representation excludes those attributes. To obtain those attributes, fetch the "detailed" representation.)

Example: When you get a list of repositories, you get the summary representation of each repository. Here, we fetch the list of repositories owned by the octokit organization:

GET /orgs/octokit/repos

Detailed representations

When you fetch an individual resource, the response typically includes all attributes for that resource. This is the "detailed" representation of the resource. (Note that authorization sometimes influences the amount of detail included in the representation.)

Example: When you get an individual repository, you get the detailed representation of the repository. Here, we fetch the octokit/octokit.rb repository:

GET /repos/octokit/octokit.rb

The documentation provides an example response for each API method. The example response illustrates all attributes that are returned by that method.

Authentication

GitHub recommends that you create a token to authenticate to the REST API. For more information about which type of token to create, see "Authenticating to the REST API."

You can authenticate your request by sending a token in the Authorization header of your request:

curl --request GET \
--url "http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/octocat" \
--header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR-TOKEN"

If you try to use a REST API endpoint without a token or with a token that has insufficient permissions, you will receive a 404 Not Found or 403 Forbidden response.

OAuth2 key/secret

curl -u my_client_id:my_client_secret 'http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/user/repos'

Using your client_id and client_secret does not authenticate as a user, it will only identify your OAuth App to increase your rate limit. Permissions are only granted to users, not applications, and you will only get back data that an unauthenticated user would see. Don't leak your OAuth App's client secret to your users.

You will be unable to authenticate using your OAuth2 key and secret while in private mode, and trying to authenticate will return 401 Unauthorized. For more information, see "Enabling private mode".

Failed login limit

Authenticating with invalid credentials will return 401 Unauthorized:

$ curl -I http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3 --header "Authorization: Bearer INVALID-TOKEN"
> HTTP/2 401

> {
>   "message": "Bad credentials",
>   "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/enterprise/3.7/rest"
> }

After detecting several requests with invalid credentials within a short period, the API will temporarily reject all authentication attempts for that user (including ones with valid credentials) with 403 Forbidden:

> HTTP/2 403
> {
>   "message": "Maximum number of login attempts exceeded. Please try again later.",
>   "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/enterprise/3.7/rest"
> }

Parameters

Many API methods take optional parameters. For GET requests, any parameters not specified as a segment in the path can be passed as an HTTP query string parameter:

$ curl -i "http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/repos/vmg/redcarpet/issues?state=closed"

In this example, the 'vmg' and 'redcarpet' values are provided for the :owner and :repo parameters in the path while :state is passed in the query string.

For POST, PATCH, PUT, and DELETE requests, parameters not included in the URL should be encoded as JSON with a Content-Type of 'application/json':

$ curl -i --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR-TOKEN" -d '{"scopes":["repo_deployment"]}' http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/authorizations

Root endpoint

You can issue a GET request to the root endpoint to get all the endpoint categories that the REST API supports:

$ curl -u USERNAME:PASSWORD http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3

GraphQL global node IDs

See the guide on "Using global node IDs" for detailed information about how to find node_ids via the REST API and use them in GraphQL operations.

Client errors

There are three possible types of client errors on API calls that receive request bodies:

1. Sending invalid JSON will result in a 400 Bad Request response.

   HTTP/2 400
   Content-Length: 35
   
   {"message":"Problems parsing JSON"}
   

2. Sending the wrong type of JSON values will result in a 400 Bad Request response.

    HTTP/2 400
    Content-Length: 40
   
    {"message":"Body should be a JSON object"}
   

3. Sending invalid fields will result in a 422 Unprocessable Entity response.

    HTTP/2 422
    Content-Length: 149
   
    {
      "message": "Validation Failed",
      "errors": [
        {
          "resource": "Issue",
          "field": "title",
          "code": "missing_field"
        }
      ]
    }
   

All error objects have resource and field properties so that your client can tell what the problem is. There's also an error code to let you know what is wrong with the field.

Error code	Description
missing	A resource does not exist.
missing_field	A required field on a resource has not been set.
invalid	The formatting of a field is invalid. Review the documentation for more specific information.
already_exists	Another resource has the same value as this field. This can happen in resources that must have some unique key (such as label names).
unprocessable	The inputs provided were invalid.

Resources may also send custom validation errors (where code is custom). Custom errors will always have a message field describing the error, and most errors will also include a documentation_url field pointing to some content that might help you resolve the error.

HTTP redirects

The GitHub Enterprise Server REST API uses HTTP redirection where appropriate. Clients should assume that any request may result in a redirection. Receiving an HTTP redirection is not an error and clients should follow that redirect. Redirect responses will have a Location header field which contains the URI of the resource to which the client should repeat the requests.

A 301 status code indicates permanent redirection. The URI you used to make the request has been superseded by the one specified in the Location header field. This and all future requests to this resource should be directed to the new URI.

A 302 or 307 status code indicates temporary redirection. The request should be repeated verbatim to the URI specified in the Location header field but clients should continue to use the original URI for future requests.

Other redirection status codes may be used in accordance with the HTTP 1.1 spec.

HTTP verbs

Where possible, the GitHub Enterprise Server REST API strives to use appropriate HTTP verbs for each action. Note that HTTP verbs are case-sensitive.

Verb	Description
HEAD	Can be issued against any resource to get just the HTTP header info.
GET	Used for retrieving resources.
POST	Used for creating resources.
PATCH	Used for updating resources with partial JSON data. For instance, an Issue resource has title and body attributes. A PATCH request may accept one or more of the attributes to update the resource.
PUT	Used for replacing resources or collections. For PUT requests with no body attribute, be sure to set the Content-Length header to zero.
DELETE	Used for deleting resources.

Hypermedia

All resources may have one or more *_url properties linking to other resources. These are meant to provide explicit URLs so that proper API clients don't need to construct URLs on their own. It is highly recommended that API clients use these. Doing so will make future upgrades of the API easier for developers. All URLs are expected to be proper RFC 6570 URI templates.

You can then expand these templates using something like the uri_template gem:

>> tmpl = URITemplate.new('/notifications{?since,all,participating}')
>> tmpl.expand
=> "/notifications"

>> tmpl.expand all: 1
=> "/notifications?all=1"

>> tmpl.expand all: 1, participating: 1
=> "/notifications?all=1&participating=1"

Pagination

When a response from the REST API would include many results, GitHub will paginate the results and return a subset of the results. You can use the link header from the response to request additional pages of data. If an endpoint supports the per_page query parameter, then you can control how many results are returned on a page. For more information about pagination, see "Using pagination in the REST API."

Timeouts

If GitHub takes more than 10 seconds to process an API request, GitHub will terminate the request and you will receive a timeout response like this:

{
    "message": "Server Error"
}

GitHub Enterprise Server reserves the right to change the timeout window to protect the speed and reliability of the API.

Rate limiting

The GitHub Enterprise Server REST API uses rate limiting to control API traffic. Different types of API requests have different rate limits. The response headers describe your current rate limit status.

Rate limits

Different types of API requests to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance are subject to different rate limits. Additionally, the Search endpoints have dedicated limits. For more information, see "Search" in the REST API documentation.

Rate limits for requests from personal accounts

You can make direct API requests that you authenticate with a personal access token. An OAuth App or GitHub App can also make a request on your behalf after you authorize the app. For more information, see "Managing your personal access tokens," "Authorizing OAuth Apps," and "Authorizing GitHub Apps."

GitHub Enterprise Server associates all of these requests with the authenticated user. For OAuth Apps and GitHub Apps, this is the user who authorized the app. All of these requests count toward the authenticated user's rate limit.

By default, user access token requests are limited to 5,000 requests per hour and per authenticated user. All requests from OAuth applications authorized by a user or a personal access token owned by the user, and requests authenticated with any of the user's authentication credentials, share the same quota of 5,000 requests per hour for that user.

Rate limits for requests from GitHub Apps

Requests from a GitHub App may either use a user access token or an installation access token. For more information about rate limits for GitHub Apps, see "Rate limits for GitHub Apps."

Rate limits for requests from GitHub Actions

You can use the built-in GITHUB_TOKEN to authenticate requests in GitHub Actions workflows. For more information, see "Automatic token authentication."

When using GITHUB_TOKEN, the rate limit is 1,000 requests per hour per repository.

Checking your rate limit status

The response headers describe your current rate limit status. You can also use the REST API to find the current number of API calls available to you or your app at any given time.

Rate limit headers

The x-ratelimit response headers describe your current rate limit status following every request:

$ curl -i http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/users/octocat
> HTTP/2 200
> x-ratelimit-limit: 60
> x-ratelimit-remaining: 56
> x-ratelimit-used: 4
> x-ratelimit-reset: 1372700873

Header name	Description
x-ratelimit-limit	The maximum number of requests you're permitted to make per hour.
x-ratelimit-remaining	The number of requests remaining in the current rate limit window.
x-ratelimit-used	The number of requests you've made in the current rate limit window.
x-ratelimit-reset	The time at which the current rate limit window resets in UTC epoch seconds.

Checking your rate limit status with the REST API

You can use the REST API to check your rate limit status without incurring a hit to the current limit. For more information, see "Rate limit." When possible, GitHub recommends using the x-ratelimit response headers instead to decrease load on the API.

Exceeding the rate limit

If you exceed the rate limit, the response will have a 403 status and the x-ratelimit-remaining header will be 0:

> HTTP/2 403
> Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 14:50:41 GMT
> x-ratelimit-limit: 60
> x-ratelimit-remaining: 0
> x-ratelimit-used: 60
> x-ratelimit-reset: 1377013266

> {
>    "message": "API rate limit exceeded for xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. (But here's the good news: Authenticated requests get a higher rate limit. Check out the documentation for more details.)",
>    "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/enterprise/3.7/rest/overview/resources-in-the-rest-api#rate-limiting"
> }

If you are rate limited, you should not try your request until after the time specified by the x-ratelimit-reset time.

Increasing the unauthenticated rate limit for OAuth Apps

If your OAuth App needs to make unauthenticated calls to public resources at a higher rate limit, you can pass your app's client ID and secret before the endpoint route.

$ curl -u my_client_id:my_client_secret -I http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/meta
> HTTP/2 200
> Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 17:27:06 GMT
> x-ratelimit-limit: 5000
> x-ratelimit-remaining: 4966
> x-ratelimit-used: 34
> x-ratelimit-reset: 1372700873

Staying within the rate limit

If you exceed your rate limit using Basic Authentication or OAuth, you can likely fix the issue by caching API responses and using conditional requests.

Secondary rate limits

The rate limits described above apply to the entire REST API and are per-user or per-app. In order to provide quality service on GitHub Enterprise Server, additional rate limits may apply to some actions when using the API. For example, using the API to rapidly create content, poll aggressively instead of using webhooks, make multiple concurrent requests, or repeatedly request data that is computationally expensive may result in additional rate limiting.

These additional rate limits are not intended to interfere with legitimate use of the API. Your normal rate limits should be the only limit you target. To ensure you're acting as a good API citizen, check out our Best Practices guidelines.

If your application triggers an additional rate limit, you'll receive an informative response:

> HTTP/2 403
> Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
> Connection: close

> {
>   "message": "You have exceeded a secondary rate limit and have been temporarily blocked from content creation. Please retry your request again later.",
>   "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/enterprise/3.7/rest/overview/resources-in-the-rest-api#secondary-rate-limits"
> }

You should wait and try your request at a later time. If the retry-after response header is present, you should not retry your request until after that many seconds has elapsed. If the x-ratelimit-remaining header is 0, you should not retry your request until after the time, in UTC epoch seconds, specified by the x-ratelimit-reset header. Otherwise, wait for an exponentially increasing amount of time between retries, and throw an error after a specific number of retries.

Conditional requests

Most responses return an ETag header. Many responses also return a Last-Modified header. You can use the values of these headers to make subsequent requests to those resources using the If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since headers, respectively. If the resource has not changed, the server will return a 304 Not Modified.

$ curl -I http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/user
> HTTP/2 200
> Cache-Control: private, max-age=60
> ETag: "644b5b0155e6404a9cc4bd9d8b1ae730"
> Last-Modified: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:31:30 GMT
> Vary: Accept, Authorization, Cookie
> x-ratelimit-limit: 5000
> x-ratelimit-remaining: 4996
> x-ratelimit-reset: 1372700873

$ curl -I http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/user -H 'If-None-Match: "644b5b0155e6404a9cc4bd9d8b1ae730"'
> HTTP/2 304
> Cache-Control: private, max-age=60
> ETag: "644b5b0155e6404a9cc4bd9d8b1ae730"
> Last-Modified: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:31:30 GMT
> Vary: Accept, Authorization, Cookie
> x-ratelimit-limit: 5000
> x-ratelimit-remaining: 4996
> x-ratelimit-reset: 1372700873

$ curl -I http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/user -H "If-Modified-Since: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:31:30 GMT"
> HTTP/2 304
> Cache-Control: private, max-age=60
> Last-Modified: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:31:30 GMT
> Vary: Accept, Authorization, Cookie
> x-ratelimit-limit: 5000
> x-ratelimit-remaining: 4996
> x-ratelimit-reset: 1372700873

Cross origin resource sharing

The API supports Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for AJAX requests from any origin. You can read the CORS W3C Recommendation, or this intro from the HTML 5 Security Guide.

Here's a sample request sent from a browser hitting http://example.com:

$ curl -I http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3 -H "Origin: http://example.com"
HTTP/2 302
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Expose-Headers: ETag, Link, X-GitHub-OTP, x-ratelimit-limit, x-ratelimit-remaining, x-ratelimit-reset, X-OAuth-Scopes, X-Accepted-OAuth-Scopes, X-Poll-Interval

This is what the CORS preflight request looks like:

$ curl -I http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3 -H "Origin: http://example.com" -X OPTIONS
HTTP/2 204
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization, Content-Type, If-Match, If-Modified-Since, If-None-Match, If-Unmodified-Since, X-GitHub-OTP, X-Requested-With
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, PATCH, PUT, DELETE
Access-Control-Expose-Headers: ETag, Link, X-GitHub-OTP, x-ratelimit-limit, x-ratelimit-remaining, x-ratelimit-reset, X-OAuth-Scopes, X-Accepted-OAuth-Scopes, X-Poll-Interval
Access-Control-Max-Age: 86400

JSON-P callbacks

You can send a ?callback parameter to any GET call to have the results wrapped in a JSON function. This is typically used when browsers want to embed GitHub Enterprise Server content in web pages by getting around cross domain issues. The response includes the same data output as the regular API, plus the relevant HTTP Header information.

$ curl http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3?callback=foo

> /**/foo({
>   "meta": {
>     "status": 200,
>     "x-ratelimit-limit": "5000",
>     "x-ratelimit-remaining": "4966",
>     "x-ratelimit-reset": "1372700873",
>     "Link": [ // pagination headers and other links
>       ["http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3?page=2", {"rel": "next"}]
>     ]
>   },
>   "data": {
>     // the data
>   }
> })

You can write a JavaScript handler to process the callback. Here's a minimal example you can try out:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function foo(response) {
  var meta = response.meta;
  var data = response.data;
  console.log(meta);
  console.log(data);
}

var script = document.createElement('script');
script.src = 'http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3?callback=foo';

document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(script);
</script>
</head>

<body>
  <p>Open up your browser's console.</p>
</body>
</html>

All of the headers are the same String value as the HTTP Headers with one notable exception: Link. Link headers are pre-parsed for you and come through as an array of [url, options] tuples.

A link that looks like this:

Link: <url1>; rel="next", <url2>; rel="foo"; bar="baz"

... will look like this in the Callback output:

{
  "Link": [
    [
      "url1",
      {
        "rel": "next"
      }
    ],
    [
      "url2",
      {
        "rel": "foo",
        "bar": "baz"
      }
    ]
  ]
}

Timezones

Some requests that create new data, such as creating a new commit, allow you to provide time zone information when specifying or generating timestamps. We apply the following rules, in order of priority, to determine timezone information for such API calls.

• Explicitly providing an ISO 8601 timestamp with timezone information
• Using the Time-Zone header
• Using the last known timezone for the user
• Defaulting to UTC without other timezone information

Note that these rules apply only to data passed to the API, not to data returned by the API. As mentioned in "Schema," timestamps returned by the API are in UTC time, ISO 8601 format.

Explicitly providing an ISO 8601 timestamp with timezone information

For API calls that allow for a timestamp to be specified, we use that exact timestamp. An example of this is the API to manage commits. For more information, see "Git database."

These timestamps look something like 2014-02-27T15:05:06+01:00. Also see this example for how these timestamps can be specified.

Using the Time-Zone header

It is possible to supply a Time-Zone header which defines a timezone according to the list of names from the Olson database.

$ curl -H "Time-Zone: Europe/Amsterdam" -X POST http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/repos/github-linguist/linguist/contents/new_file.md

This means that we generate a timestamp for the moment your API call is made in the timezone this header defines. For example, the API to manage contents generates a git commit for each addition or change and uses the current time as the timestamp. For more information, see "Repositories." This header will determine the timezone used for generating that current timestamp.

Using the last known timezone for the user

If no Time-Zone header is specified and you make an authenticated call to the API, we use the last known timezone for the authenticated user. The last known timezone is updated whenever you browse the GitHub Enterprise Server website.

Defaulting to UTC without other timezone information

If the steps above don't result in any information, we use UTC as the timezone to create the git commit.