The simplest way to get commit count of a GitHub repository through the API

commitCount.sh

curl -I -k "https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/commits?per_page=1" | sed -n '/^[Ll]ink:/ s/.*"next".*page=\([0-9]*\).*"last".*/\1/p'

### And that's all !
# I saw many fighting with finding first commit SHA or similar fancy thing.
# Here we just rely on the GH API, asking commits at 1 per page and parsing the last page number in the header of the reply (whose body only holds the last commit !)
# So this is robust and bandwidth efficient. :)

# If one want the commit count of a specific SHA, just use :
curl -I -k "https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/commits?per_page=1&sha=:sha" | sed -n '/^[Ll]ink:/ s/.*"next".*page=\([0-9]*\).*"last".*/\1/p'

# And for a specific time (date using ISO 8601 format, 'Z' for UTC) :
curl -I -k "https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/commits?per_page=1&until=yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ssZ" | sed -n '/^[Ll]ink:/ s/.*"next".*page=\([0-9]*\).*"last".*/\1/p'

👍

Thanks a ton! 👍

Forked with a quick and dirty Python implementation here: https://gist.github.com/codsane/25f0fd100b565b3fce03d4bbd7e7bf33

This is awesome. For anyone wanting to use authenticated calls, replace the curl -I -k "..." with gh api -i /repos/:owner/:repo/commits?per_page=1

if I could give you 100 stars for this beautiful snippet

I get a different number than with git rev-list --all --count any idea what I'm doing wrong?

@DrKabum which repo are you targeting?

@openbrain thanks for jumping in but I just figured what my mistake was.

Basically, I wanted to get a commit count after a migration of a repo from Bitbucket to Github. The problem was that on GH, the default branch wasn't set to master by default (but a feature branch. This branch is actually the first alphabetically, maybe that's why). So the count from the API was on a different branch than when I ran git rev-list locally on master, hence the different results.

curl -I -k "https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/commits?per_page=1" | sed -n '/^[Ll]ink:/ s/."next".page=([0-9])."last".*/\1/p'

I ran this one as
curl -u "$username:$password" -I -k "https://github.com/repos/$owner/$Repo/commits?per_page=1" | sed -n '/^[Ll]ink:/ s/."next".page=([0-9])."last".*/\1/p'

But i am not getting the commit count

when i ran it as

curl -u "username:password" -I -k "https://github.com/repos/$owner/$Repo/commits?per_page=100000000000000000"

Getting maximum commit count as 100 only not getting the full count for the repos which have more than 100+ commits

@Vamsi259 Why did you remove much '*' characters from the sed regex ? They are important for the command to work.

Actually it was typo while pasting the command in comments I tried with the same command

curl -u "$username:$password" -I -k "https://github.com/repos/$owner/$repo/commits?per_page=1" | sed -n '/^[Ll]ink:/ s/."next".page=([0-9])."last".*/\1/p'

% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0

but it is not giving any result

curl -u "$username:$password" -I -k "https://github.com/repos/$owner/$repos/commits?per_page=1" | sed -n '/^[Ll]ink:/ s/."next".page=([0-9])."last".*/\1/p'

While pasting the command in comments section few * are getting deleted here

@Vamsi259 you can use backquotes to paste your code
What is the repo against which you're running the command?

Its working. Thankyou.. This is really helpful

Its working. Thankyou.. This is really helpful

Great. For sake of curiosity, what was the issue ? 😄

I have changed little bit in the curl request from
curl -I -k "https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/commits?per_page=1" | sed -n '/^[Ll]ink:/ s/.*"next".*page=\([0-9]*\).*"last".*/\1/p'
to
curl -I -k "https://api.github.com/api/v3/repos/:owner/:repo/commits?per_page=1" | sed -n '/^[Ll]ink:/ s/.*"next".*page=\([0-9]*\).*"last".*/\1/p'

then it started working

I have changed little bit in the curl request

OK thx. A bit weird because the Gist uses the standard API. Anyway, good you have it to work.

For anyone curious: getting Repository commit counts can be done quite easily with the GraphQL API
https://stackoverflow.com/a/75854793/19264346

I want it in javascript

I want it in javascript

Not a JS expert but something like:

var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open('GET', 'https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/commits?per_page=1', false);
request.send(null);
request.getResponseHeader('link').match(/"next".*page=([0-9]+).*"last"/)[1];

This is awesome. For anyone wanting to use authenticated calls, replace the curl -I -k "..." with gh api -i /repos/:owner/:repo/commits?per_page=1

👍

TYSM for this I spent like half an hour coding a custom Java utility cause I just couldn't get Runtime to work and now I found this. Thank you man. I have to learn more Bash :)