Avoid polling
You should subscribe to webhook events instead of polling the API for data. This will help your integration stay within the API rate limit. For more information, see "Webhooks documentation."
Follow any redirects that the API sends you
GitHub is explicit in telling you when a resource has moved by providing a redirect status code. You should follow these redirections. Every redirect response sets the Location header with the new URI to go to. If you receive a redirect, it's best to update your code to follow the new URI, in case you're requesting a deprecated path that we might remove.
We've provided a list of HTTP status codes to watch out for when designing your app to follow redirects.
Don't manually parse URLs
Often, API responses contain data in the form of URLs. For example, when requesting a repository, we'll send a key called clone_url with a URL you can use to clone the repository.
For the stability of your app, you shouldn't try to parse this data or try to guess and construct the format of future URLs. Your app is liable to break if we decide to change the URL.
For example, when working with paginated results, it's often tempting to construct URLs that append ?page=<number> to the end. Avoid that temptation. For more information about dependably following paginated results, see "Using pagination in the REST API."
Dealing with API errors
Although your code would never introduce a bug, you may find that you've encountered successive errors when trying to access the API.
Rather than ignore repeated 4xx and 5xx status codes, you should ensure that you're correctly interacting with the API. For example, if an endpoint requests a string and you're passing it a numeric value, you're going to receive a 5xx validation error, and your call won't succeed. Similarly, attempting to access an unauthorized or nonexistent endpoint will result in a 4xx error.
Intentionally ignoring repeated validation errors may result in the suspension of your app for abuse.