🔗 DevOps Day 8 — Build a Beginner-Friendly GitHub API Project with Shell Scripting

 

🚀 Introduction

Welcome to Day 8 of the DevOps series!

In this lesson, we’ll build something practical: a GitHub repository tracker using just shell scripting and curl.

This project introduces you to API integration — one of the most important DevOps skills.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll know how to:

• Fetch live GitHub data using an API

• Parse results using a simple tool (jq)

• Automate your report using a cron job

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💡 What Is an API?

An API (Application Programming Interface) allows two systems to communicate.

In our case, we’ll use GitHub’s REST API to ask questions like:

• “How many ⭐ stars does this repo have?”

• “How many open PRs or issues exist?”

GitHub’s API responds in JSON format — a lightweight data structure we can read easily with jq.

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🧰 Prerequisites

Before we start:

1. Install curl and jq

   sudo apt-get install curl jq -y   # Ubuntu/Debian
   

   curl lets you talk to APIs, and jq helps read JSON data.

2. Know your GitHub repo
   Example:

   • Owner (user/org): torvalds

   • Repo name: linux

3. (Optional) Add a GitHub Token for higher rate limits

   export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_yourTokenHere
   

   (You can skip this for public repos.)

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🧩 Step 1 — Create the Script

Create a file called github_report.sh and paste this code:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Simple GitHub Repo Tracker
# Usage: ./github_report.sh <owner> <repo>
set -euo pipefail
OWNER="${1:-}"
REPO="${2:-}"
if [[ -z "$OWNER" || -z "$REPO" ]]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 <owner> <repo>"
  exit 1
fi
API="https://api.github.com"
HDR=(-H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json")
[[ -n "${GITHUB_TOKEN:-}" ]] && HDR+=(-H "Authorization: Bearer ${GITHUB_TOKEN}")
echo "📊 GitHub Repository Report"
echo "Repository: ${OWNER}/${REPO}"
echo "---------------------------"
# Get repository info
repo_data=$(curl -sS "${HDR[@]}" "${API}/repos/${OWNER}/${REPO}")
stars=$(echo "$repo_data" | jq '.stargazers_count')
forks=$(echo "$repo_data" | jq '.forks_count')
# Open PRs
open_prs=$(curl -sS "${HDR[@]}" \
  "${API}/search/issues?q=repo:${OWNER}/${REPO}+type:pr+state:open" | jq '.total_count')
# Open Issues
open_issues=$(curl -sS "${HDR[@]}" \
  "${API}/search/issues?q=repo:${OWNER}/${REPO}+type:issue+state:open" | jq '.total_count')
echo "⭐ Stars:        $stars"
echo "🍴 Forks:        $forks"
echo "🔃 Open PRs:     $open_prs"
echo "🐞 Open Issues:  $open_issues"
echo "---------------------------"
# Save to a local file
mkdir -p reports
DATE=$(date +%F)
echo "$DATE,$stars,$forks,$open_prs,$open_issues" >> reports/github_stats.csv
echo "✅ Data saved to reports/github_stats.csv"

---

⚙️ Step 2 — Run the Script

Make it executable:

chmod +x github_report.sh

Then run:

./github_report.sh torvalds linux

Example output:

📊 GitHub Repository Report
Repository: torvalds/linux
---------------------------
⭐ Stars:        177000
🍴 Forks:        57000
🔃 Open PRs:     420
🐞 Open Issues:  980
---------------------------
✅ Data saved to reports/github_stats.csv

---

⏰ Step 3 — Automate with Cron

You can make this run daily and collect historical data.

Open the cron editor:

crontab -e

Add this line (runs every morning at 8 AM):

0 8 * * * /bin/bash /path/github_report.sh your-user your-repo >> /path/reports/gh.log 2>&1

This keeps a growing CSV (github_stats.csv) — one line per day with your repo stats.

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🔐 Step 4 — Best Practices

• For private repos, you must use a GitHub token with repo:read permission.

• Keep your token secret (never upload it to GitHub).

• You can extend the script to show:

  • Last 5 commits

  • Latest workflow run status

  • Top contributors

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🌟 Summary

You just built your first DevOps automation with an API using shell scripting!

What you learned today:

• How to make API calls using curl

• How to read JSON data with jq

• How to save and schedule data collection with cron

“APIs + Shell scripting = endless automation possibilities.”