gh-search

Usage

export GITHUB_TOKEN=..

gh-search --search [SEARCH_TERM] \
  --language [LANGUAGE] \
  --user [USER] \
  --org [ORG] \
  --repo [REPO] \
  --extension [EXT] \
  --per-page [NUM] \
  --path [PATH] \
  --out [DIR]

Examples

• Find instances of api in json files that isn't package.json

  gh-search --search api --language json --not --filename package.json

• Find references of api.github.com in shell scripts owned by github

  gh-search --search api.github.com --language shell --org github

• Search jq files that define functions and output first 10 to /tmp/jq

  gh-search --search def --extension jq --per-page 10 --out /tmp/jq

• Find instances of episode in json and csv fields that don't contain /locales/

  gh-search --search episode --language json --or --language csv --not --path "/locales/" --out /tmp/data/tv

• Search github for files that mention your username that isn't owned by you
  (hopefully your username isn't something common)

  gh-search --search nntrn --not --user nntrn --out /tmp/github_nntrn
  cd /tmp/github_nntrn
  grep -r nntrn .

Github Code Search Factsheet

Due to the complexity of searching code, there are a few restrictions on how searches are performed:

• Only the default branch is considered. In most cases, this will be the master branch.
• Only files smaller than 384 KB are searchable.
• You must always include at least one search term when searching source code. For example, searching for language:go is not valid, while amazing language:go is.

Considerations

• By default, bare search terms search both paths and file content.

• Except with filename searches, you must always include at least one search term
  (i.e. q=language:javascript is not valid but q=football+language:javascript is ok)

• GITHUB_TOKEN is required to search code

• Code in forks is only searchable if the fork has more stars than the parent repository

• Only the default branch is indexed for code search

• Only files smaller than 384 KB are searchable

• Up to 4,000 private repositories are searchable

• Only repositories with fewer than 500,000 files are searchable

• You can't use the following wildcard characters as part of your search query:
  . , : ; / \ ` ' " = * ! ? # $ & + ^ | ~ < > ( ) { } [ ] @

  This search	Finds repositories with…
  curl repo:nntrn/bookstand	Find all instances of curl in nntrn/bookstand
  shogun user:heroku	Find references to shogun from all public heroku repositories.
  join extension:coffee	Find all instances of join in code with coffee extension.
  system size:>1000	Find all instances of system in code of file size greater than 1000kbs.
  examples path:/docs/	Find all examples in the path /docs/.
  replace fork:true	Search replace in the source code of forks.

References

• https://docs.github.com/en/rest/search/search
• https://docs.github.com/en/search-github/searching-on-github/searching-code
• https://docs.github.com/en/search-github/getting-started-with-searching-on-github/understanding-the-search-syntax
• https://github.com/search/advanced
• https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/rest/search/search?apiVersion=2022-11-28#search-code