Get specific README.md data from Github API

Question

Recently, I started experimenting with the GitHub API getting specific data from public repos. Long story short, I want to grab specific parts of the README.md file from a repo.

For example, the master branch from Facebook's react repository I want to grab the text under the Documentation header the GitHub API. Is this possible? Any methods of achieving this are welcome. Thank you!

API : React README.md API Data

Public Github URL: React public repo

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 04 '18 at 04:51

12

There is no way to do this with the API, but one easy way is with sed; try this from a Linux command line:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/facebook/react/master/README.md | \
    sed -n '/## Documentation/,/##/p'

This will return everything between the Documentation header and the next one.

answered Dec 04 '18 at 04:51

Ken Y-N

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Perfection! Thank you, using that works just as well – Cody Dec 04 '18 at 21:08

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 22 '22 at 05:10

8

There is a very awesome way to use any GitHub repository MARKDOWN.md file with the use of API.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/{owner}/{repo}/{branch}/README.md

the above API returns everything in your README.md file in raw MarkDown format. api-use-picture

edited Feb 22 '22 at 05:10

Ratto

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answered Sep 22 '21 at 16:07

Suryapratap Singh

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2

This is another great idea, thanks! Then I assume you can parse the HTML or Markdown after getting the raw data. – Cody Sep 22 '21 at 17:22

Cyclonecode · Answer 3 · 2023-05-17T10:28:59.957

Fetching content from the repository could be done like this:

curl -L \
-H 'Accept: application/vnd.github+json' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
-H 'X-Github-Api-Version: 2022-11-28' \
https://api.github.com/repos/<OWNER>/<REPO>/contents/README.md

The respons will be an object and the actual data is held base64 encoded under a key named content. Here is an example using php:

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://api.github.com/repos/<OWNER>/<REPO>/contents/README.md");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, [
  'Accept: application/vnd.github+json',
  'X-Github-Api-Version: 2022-11-28',
  'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>',
]);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'my-user-agent');
$response = curl_exec($ch);
$response = \json_decode($response);
$readmeContent = base64_decode($response->content);

The above assumes that this is a private repository, so if that is the case you will need to generate a new private access token and set the correct header. Of course you will also have to change the OWNER and REPO in the above example.

Get specific README.md data from Github API

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