melaus/github-top5

Create an HTTP API to return largest 5 repos of a user in descending order

Introduction

This is an HTTP API to return largest 5 repos of a given GitHub handle in descending order.

Usage / Live Demo

Temporarily down as part of moving my website to AWS

The base URL to deployed API is https://apis.melaus.xyz/top5, and has two endpoints:

• https://apis.melaus.xyz/top5/<github_handle>:
  • returns high-level information (name, url and size) about the largest 5 repos of a user
• https://apis.melaus.xyz/top5/<github_handle>/detailed:
  • returns all information about the largest 5 repos of a user

Technical Details

API Development

Python and the Flask framework is used to create this API.

This is built in two parts. github.py works as a 'library' and carries out the call to the public GitHub API to obtain repo information of a user. The content is being sorted and transformed to form the output of the two endpoints. The GitHub API returns a status 404 if the API call is failed, e.g. a non-existing username is given. This API handles such error similarly. top5_api.py forms the structure of the API call using Flask.

Pagination is used to retrieve all public repos of the given user, as the maximum number of repos that can be retrieved per call is 100. A token is used to increase the rate limit per hour.

Deployment

This is the first time I have written an API and made it available on the web. The closest experience was setting up my static personal website using pelican, which also gave me basic experience in encrypting a website, basic handling of nginx and self-hosting on DigitalOcean.

For deployment, the first hurdle that needed solving is the way to deploy a Flask API. To enable a more scalable and reliable solution, a uWSGI application server is used rather than the built-in server. With the help of this guide, I set up the API with associated configurations and run it as a system service, so that it is quicker to make changes and can run in the background and restart automatically if the machine was turned off.

To host the API, I use my aforementioned personal website. First, I created the subdomain apis.melaus.xyz by adding a CNAME DNS record that aliases to apis.melaus.xyz. I then created the nginx configuration file that specifies the local location of the API, so that it can be served on the web. Also, I updated my certificate to include the new subdomain to make it accessible. By enabling the configuration and restarting nginx, the API is live.