A Symfony2 service for fetching all of a Github user's gists. Gist content for the 10 latest gists is downloaded, and Github API responses are cached using APC.

GistService.php

<?php
/**
 * A Symfony2 service for fetching all of a Github user's gists.
 * Gist content for the 10 latest gists is downloaded, and Github API responses are cached using APC.
 * The APC extension for PHP needs to be enabled.
 * 
 * In order to use this Service, you should add the following services to Symfony2:
 * 
 * services:
 *     cache:
 *         class: Doctrine\Common\Cache\ApcCache
 *         arguments: [%kernel.cache_dir%]
 *     gist.service:
 *         class: My\ExampleBundle\Service\GistService
 *         arguments: [@cache]
 * 
 * Usage: $this->get('gist.service')->getGists();
 * 
 * @author Kalman Olah <hello _AT_ kalmanolah _DOT_ net>
 */

namespace My\ExampleBundle\Service;

class GistService {

    private $gh_username        = 'kalmanolah';
    // Replace this with your Github access token (https://github.com/settings/applications)
    private $gh_access_token    = 'yoursupersecretgithubaccesstoken';

    private $gh_api_endpoint    = 'https://api.github.com/';

    private $cache;
    private $cache_ttl          = 3600; // It's not like we need instant updates

    public function __construct($cache)
    {
        $this->cache = $cache;
        $this->cache->setNamespace('gist.cache');
    }

    public function getGists()
    {
        $response = $this->getApiResponse('users/' . $this->gh_username . '/gists');

        $i = 0; // Only fetch content for the first 10 gists
        foreach($response as $key => $single) {
            if ($i < 10) {
                $response[$key] = $this->getGist($single->id);
                $i++;
            }
        }

        return $response;
    }

    private function getApiResponse($string, $FETCH_AS_ARRAY = FALSE)
    {
        $url = $this->generateApiUrl($string);

        $response = $this->getResponse($url);
        $response = json_decode($response, $FETCH_AS_ARRAY);

        return $response;
    }

    private function getResponse($url, $NO_CACHE = FALSE)
    {
        $response = null;

        if($NO_CACHE || false === ($response = $this->cache->fetch($url))) {
            $options = array(
                CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER      => 1,
                CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION      => 1,
                CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER          => array('Content-type: text/plain; application/json'),
                CURLOPT_URL                 => $url,
            );

            $response = $this->getCurlResponse($options);

            if (!$NO_CACHE) {
                $this->cache->save($url, $response, $this->cache_ttl);
            }
        }

        return $response;
    }

    private function generateApiUrl($string)
    {
        return $this->gh_api_endpoint . $string . '?access_token=' . $this->gh_access_token;
    }

    private function getGist($id)
    {
        // If we don't fetch these responses as arrays,
        // Twig will cry and/or we'll have to cast stuff to arrays later on
        $response = $this->getApiResponse('gists/' . $id, TRUE);
        return $response;
    }

    private function getCurlResponse($options)
    {
        try {
            $ch = curl_init();

            if (FALSE === $ch)
                throw new \Exception('cURL failed to initialize');

            foreach($options as $key => $value) {
                curl_setopt($ch, $key, $value);
            }

            $content = curl_exec($ch);

            if (FALSE === $content)
                throw new \Exception(curl_error($ch), curl_errno($ch));

            return $content;

        } catch(\Exception $e) {

            trigger_error(sprintf(
                    'cURL failed: Error #%d: %s',
                    $e->getCode(), $e->getMessage()),
                E_USER_ERROR);

        }
    }
}