Get info about several repositories from Github Graphql API in a single call

Question

I am trying to create a query to Github GraphQL API that receive a list of repos as a parameter, and returns the info of those repositories in a single API call, does anyone know how to do that?

Something like this (I know this doesn’t work)

query myOrgRepos($repos: [String!]!) {
  search(query:"""
  repo in $repos
  """, type: REPOSITORY, first: 100) {
      repo: nodes {
          ... on Repository{
              name
              description
              updatedAt
          }
      }
  }

I think that the right way would be query:"repo:org/repo1 repo:org/repo2 repo:org/repo3" — Dec 19, 2019 at 13:02
See also gh search repo --owner user1,user2,... as an alternative to GraphQL query. — Apr 30 at 3:56

David ButlerDavid Butler 1831 silver badge11 bronze badges · Accepted Answer · 2021-12-29 18:59:47Z

My understanding of your question is that you want to input a list of "known" repos and output information about them. In this case you can form a query of the following type.

{
  nodes(ids: ["node_id_1", "node_id_2"]) {
    ... on Repository {
      nameWithOwner
      createdAt
    }
  }
}

Here the ids are the node_ids of the repositories you are interested in. You can obtain these by individual GraphQL calls as follows

{
  repository(owner: "owner", name: "name") {
    id
  }
}

score 1 · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-25 19:17:25Z

@David Butler gave an excellent answer on using GitHub’s GraphQL API.

I will extend the answer by giving more context:

Get the repository ID like this:

{
  repository(owner: "github", name: "gitignore") {
    databaseId 
    id
    name
    nameWithOwner
  }
}

Response:

{
    "data": {
        "repository": {
            "databaseId": 1062897,
            "id": "MDEwOlJlcG9zaXRvcnkxMDYyODk3",
            "name": "gitignore",
            "nameWithOwner": "github/gitignore"
        }
    }
}

get "owner" + "name" directly from the GitHub URL in your browser: https://github.com/github/gitignore
databaseId is the integer id field you also get from the REST API
id is a base64 encoded representation of the databaseId
find all possible fields in the GraphQL docs

If you decode MDEwOlJlcG9zaXRvcnkxMDYyODk3 with base64 you get 010:Repository1062897. You can read more what this means in this github community discussion.

Now you can get multiple repositories in a single call:

You need to use global node IDs (GraphQL docs):

{
  nodes(ids: ["MDEwOlJlcG9zaXRvcnkxMDYyODk3", "MDEwOlJlcG9zaXRvcnk3NjkxNjMx"]) {
    ... on Repository {
      databaseId
      nameWithOwner
      createdAt
    }
  }
}

Result:

{
    "data": {
        "nodes": [
            {
                "databaseId": 7691631,
                "nameWithOwner": "moby/moby",
                "createdAt": "2013-01-18T18:10:57Z"
            },
            {
                "databaseId": 1062897,
                "nameWithOwner": "github/gitignore",
                "createdAt": "2010-11-08T20:17:14Z"
            }
        ]
    }
}

Unfortunately, the databaseIds don’t work on nodes.

nygnyg 2,4023 gold badges26 silver badges40 bronze badges · Accepted Answer · 2021-12-24 09:52:45Z

It took me some time to understand your comment so I will post the answer in full. The key is to use Github’s advanced search “syntax” in the query string, see here for examples.

The following query will find all repositories of user “github” as well as the graphql-js repository of user “graphql”:

query {
  search(query: "user:github repo:graphql/graphql-js" type: REPOSITORY first: 10) {
    nodes {
      ... on Repository {
        name
        description
        updatedAt
      }
    }
  }
}

Get info about several repositories from Github Graphql API in a single call