Searching Keywords in GitHub

Learn how to use the GitHub API to programmatically search a keyword in a GitHub repository.

Overview

Use the following Python script to search for a keyword in a repository and export the matching lines to a CSV file using the GitHub API. This can be used to locate all references to Split SDK method calls like getTreatment across a codebase.

Prerequisites

The following environments:

• Python 2.7.15

• requests 2.20.1

Prepare the Python script

1. Open Constants.py and update the following:

• REPO with the GitHub repository in [owner]/[repo] format.

• TOKEN with your GitHub personal access token (required to use the GitHub Search API and access private repos).

• KEYWORD with the term you'd like to search for, such as getTreatment or a wrapper method used by your team.

• Optionally, update the log file name (LOG_FILE) and output path for CSV results (CSV_PATH).

Run the Python script

python Main.py

A CSV file will be generated with the name format [CSV file name]_[Keyword].csv. Each row contains the file path, line number, and matching code line.

For more information on the GitHub Search API, see the GitHub REST API documentation.