I learned I could use spaces in my API request

9th Jul 2022

GitHub's example to query their API taught me something

While I was working on a GitHub integration to feature some of my repos on my website, I found that I could use Topics (I wrote about it).

In the response, I was able to see all my repos and I could see a topics property:

"topics": ["css","featured-repo","javascript-es6","json-api","localstorage","netlify","react","vite"],

I wasn’t sure how to include featured-repo in my query.

I did some searching and I found an article that showed the basic search query syntax. In the article, the author gives an example:

q=siddhant in:name type:user

That looks weird to me… So a quick google search later, I find that spaces can be used. Seeing the spaces created a mental block but, I’m glad to know that they are ok to use (although, I’ll probably opt to use the + symbol in the future).

Then, I referenced the GitHub docs and found that you can search by topic. Using this information, I added topic:featured-repo to the query string.

// My functioning request URL initially looked like this:
https://api.github.com/search/repositories?q=adamgonzls in:name topic:featured-repo

// I later changed spaces to the + symbol:
https://api.github.com/search/repositories?q=adamgonzls+in:name+topic:featured-repo

I tested out my query in Thunder Client and success!

Beautiful data returned

I now had an array of objects that had topic:featured-repo assigned to them.

{
  "total_count": 6,
  "incomplete_results": false,
  "items": [
    {
      "id": 513339292,
      "node_id": "R_kgDOHpjvnA",
      "name": "quotely",
      "full_name": "adamgonzls/quotely",
      "private": false,
      "owner": {
        "login": "adamgonzls",
        "id": 13277437,
        "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjEzMjc3NDM3",
        "avatar_url": "https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/13277437?v=4",
        "gravatar_id": "",
        "url": "https://api.github.com/users/adamgonzls",
        "html_url": "https://github.com/adamgonzls",
        "followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/adamgonzls/followers",
        "following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/adamgonzls/following{/other_user}",
        "gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/adamgonzls/gists{/gist_id}",
        "starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/adamgonzls/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
        "subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/adamgonzls/subscriptions",
        "organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/adamgonzls/orgs",
        "repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/adamgonzls/repos",
        "events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/adamgonzls/events{/privacy}",
        "received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/adamgonzls/received_events",
        "type": "User",
        "site_admin": false
      },
      "html_url": "https://github.com/adamgonzls/quotely",
      "description": "Get inspired through quotes provided by an API laid on top of pleasing background images provided by another API",
      "fork": false,
      "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely",
      "forks_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/forks",
      "keys_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/keys{/key_id}",
      "collaborators_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/collaborators{/collaborator}",
      "teams_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/teams",
      "hooks_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/hooks",
      "issue_events_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/issues/events{/number}",
      "events_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/events",
      "assignees_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/assignees{/user}",
      "branches_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/branches{/branch}",
      "tags_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/tags",
      "blobs_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/git/blobs{/sha}",
      "git_tags_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/git/tags{/sha}",
      "git_refs_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/git/refs{/sha}",
      "trees_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/git/trees{/sha}",
      "statuses_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/statuses/{sha}",
      "languages_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/languages",
      "stargazers_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/stargazers",
      "contributors_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/contributors",
      "subscribers_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/subscribers",
      "subscription_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/subscription",
      "commits_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/commits{/sha}",
      "git_commits_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/git/commits{/sha}",
      "comments_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/comments{/number}",
      "issue_comment_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/issues/comments{/number}",
      "contents_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/contents/{+path}",
      "compare_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/compare/{base}...{head}",
      "merges_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/merges",
      "archive_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/{archive_format}{/ref}",
      "downloads_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/downloads",
      "issues_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/issues{/number}",
      "pulls_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/pulls{/number}",
      "milestones_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/milestones{/number}",
      "notifications_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/notifications{?since,all,participating}",
      "labels_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/labels{/name}",
      "releases_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/releases{/id}",
      "deployments_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/adamgonzls/quotely/deployments",
      "created_at": "2022-07-13T01:15:33Z",
      "updated_at": "2022-07-15T16:58:26Z",
      "pushed_at": "2022-07-17T23:31:01Z",
      "git_url": "git://github.com/adamgonzls/quotely.git",
      "ssh_url": "git@github.com:adamgonzls/quotely.git",
      "clone_url": "https://github.com/adamgonzls/quotely.git",
      "svn_url": "https://github.com/adamgonzls/quotely",
      "homepage": "",
      "size": 34,
      "stargazers_count": 0,
      "watchers_count": 0,
      "language": "JavaScript",
      "has_issues": true,
      "has_projects": true,
      "has_downloads": true,
      "has_wiki": true,
      "has_pages": false,
      "forks_count": 0,
      "mirror_url": null,
      "archived": false,
      "disabled": false,
      "open_issues_count": 0,
      "license": null,
      "allow_forking": true,
      "is_template": false,
      "web_commit_signoff_required": false,
      "topics": [
        "css",
        "featured-repo",
        "javascript-es6",
        "json",
        "react",
        "rest-api",
        "vite"
      ],
      "visibility": "public",
      "forks": 0,
      "open_issues": 0,
      "watchers": 0,
      "default_branch": "main",
      "permissions": {
        "admin": true,
        "maintain": true,
        "push": true,
        "triage": true,
        "pull": true
      },
      "score": 1.0
    },
    ...
  ]
}

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