Simple function for extracting commit messages from a GitHub user profile

gh_commit_msgs.R

## Context: https://twitter.com/grant_mcdermott/status/1272747522562244608

## Note: To get the most out of this function (private repos, etc.), I recommend
## adding a GitHub Personal Access Token to your .Renviron file. The easiest way
## to do this is with the {usethis} package. See here: 
## https://happygitwithr.com/github-pat.html#step-by-step

library(gh)
library(purrr)
library(data.table)

gh_commit_msgs =
  function(username, author = NULL) {
    if(is.null(author)) author = username
    repos = gh("GET /users/:username/repos", username = username, .limit = Inf)
    repos = map(repos, "name")
    msgs = 
      map(repos,
          function(x) {
            commits = gh("GET /repos/:username/:repo/commits", 
                         username = username, author = author, repo = x, .limit = Inf)
            m = map_chr(map(commits, "commit"), "message")
            if(length(m)==0) m = NA_character_
            data.table(repo = x, msg = m)
          })
    msgs = rbindlist(msgs)
    msgs = msgs[!is.na(msg)]
    }

## Examples ##

## All of my (public) commit messages
gmcd = gh_commit_msgs("grantmcdermott") 

## List in order of most common commit messages
gmcd[, .N, by=msg][order(-N)]

## By default the function assumes you want commits from the user's own repo(s).
## But you can also specify commits to repos belonging to someone else or an
## organisation.
gh_commit_msgs(username = "uo-ec607", author = "grantmcdermott")