GitHub Gist REST API Wrapper

A simple promise-based wrapper over the GitHub's REST API to play with GitHub Gists.

Installation

npm install @vighnesh153/github-gist

# Peer dependency
npm install axios

Before you begin

To interact with the gist in your GitHub account, you need to create a Personal Access Token with the gist scope.

• Generate your token
• Create a GitHub Gist by visiting this link. You might have to create a dummy file because GitHub doesn't allow you to create empty gist. Once you have created the gist, note down the gist id (found in the url)
• CORS configuration (if you are using this on a browser): The GET API to fetch the content of a file in a gist, is CORS protected. If you are using this library on a browser, then you will get CORS blocked. To prevent that, I have added a default CORS proxy server configuration https://corsanywhere.herokuapp.com/. But, it is not a good idea to use this default in production because it probably isn't reliable. The owner might decide to shut it down anytime. So, I recommend you to build/host your own proxy or opt in for a more reliable one. Following are some helpful links (I found these options via a quick google search and these are just to get you started and not my recommendations):
  • A cheap paid service option: https://cors.sh/
  • Host one of the following proxy server code on your platform of choice
    • https://github.com/ccoenraets/cors-proxy/blob/master/server.js
  • Create your own CORS proxy from scratch
    • Way 1: https://dev.to/decker67/write-your-own-cors-proxy-with-nodejs-in-no-time-30f9
    • Way 2: https://medium.com/nodejsmadeeasy/a-simple-cors-proxy-for-javascript-applications-9b36a8d39c51

Usage

Importing

• Import/Export

import { GithubGist } from '@vighnesh153/github-gist';

• Require

const { GithubGist } = require('@vighnesh153/github-gist');

• As a script tag (UMD modules)

<!--More on JS Deliver: https://www.jsdelivr.com/-->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@vighnesh153/github-gist/dist/main.umd.js"></script>

<script>
  const GithubGist = GithubGistUmd.GithubGist;

  // rest of the code below
</script>

Instantiation

const gist = await GithubGist.initializeUsingGistId({
  // Required
  personalAccessToken: '<GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN>',

  // Required
  gistId: '<YOUR-GIST-ID>',

  // --- OPTIONAL PARAMS BELOW ---

  // Since the gist is also commit based, we can cache the GET urls because git guarantees that
  // if the content changes, its SHA will also change which will lead to a new URL for latest content
  // If you have lot of gists and you think that caching all the files will be heavy, you can disable
  // caching by setting it to false
  enableRequestCaching: true,

  // Whether the Gist will be a public gist or a secret gist. Note that secret gists are still
  // accessible via URLs
  isPublic: false,

  // Content GET url is CORS protected and we cannot use it directly on the frontend. So, by default,
  // we add a Proxy configuration to bypass CORS protection
  //
  // If you are running this on a server/backend, you can set it to `{ type: 'none' }`
  //
  // If you want to configure CORS manually, you can use the third type:
  // `{ type: 'custom', customRequestConfig: (url) => AxiosRequestConfig }`
  //
  corsConfig: { type: 'default' },
});

Files in Gist

A gist can have multiple files. To create a file, do the following:

You can only store string content in a file. So, if you are creating a JSON file, remember to stringify the content

const pikachuJson = gist.createNewFile('pikachu.json');

console.log(pikachuJson.content);
// ''

pikachuJson.content = JSON.stringify({ message: 'Pikachu is the best' });

console.log(JSON.parse(pikachuJson.content));
// { message: "Pikachu is the best" }

Save a file

Just creating the file won't save it on your GitHub Gist. To save, you will have to invoke the save() method on it

// This will save the file on the Gist
await pikachuJson.save();

Save multiple files at once

If you have multiple new files or modified files, you can invoke save() on the gist itself to save all the files in a single HTTP request

const pikachuPython = gist.createNewFile('pikachu.py');
pikachuPython.content = `print("Pikachu is the best")`;

const pikachuJs = gist.createNewFile('pikachu.js');
pikachuJs.content = `console.log("Pikachu is the best")`;

// Saves all files in a single request
await gist.save();

Get an existing file

You can access the previously created file by doing the following

const existingPikachuJson = gist.getFileByName('pikachu.json');

Alternatively, you can also use createNewFile which will return the existing file, if it exists, else, create it and return it.

const existingPikachuJson = gist.createNewFile('pikachu.json');

Fetch the latest content of a gist

If you suspect that your local gist instance is out of date with the actual GitHub Gist, you can fetch the latest content

// Entire gist
await gist.fetchLatestContent();

// Specific file
await pikachuJson.fetchLatestContent();

Get all the files

const files = gist.files;

Get the owner of the gist

const ownerLogin = gist.owner;

Things to be aware of

Gist is an awesome way to store small amount data without having to spin up a database. But it does come with some caveats.

• You cannot use it in a multi-threaded application because all the save requests are force pushes, and you could overwrite other thread's changes
• Requests are not atomic
• Don't invoke save in parallel. Wait for the previous Promise to resolve completely before starting the next one.