Github Spy

A Node.JS script that runs periodically (cron) and reviews activity of the unwilling participant and publishes the activity/findings to an analytics engine (keen.io).

Review the blog post about the Github Spy.

Table of Contents

• Background
• Installation
• Usage
• API
• Contribute
• License

Background

Sometimes (e.g. running a coding school) you need to track how developers are interacting with GitHub. This simple script/bot reports the last public activities for a user and using Keen.IO you can make decisions of the developer/group.

While at Code RGV, I created GitHub Spy to review our students. We needed to ensure that students are modeling good behavior of software developers. Trust but verify, if you will.

Examples

The following developers were randomly picked from the trending projects.

Install

This project stands on the shoulder of giants:

• Node.JS 0.60+
• Github API JS Client
• Keen IO Tracking Client
• RedHat OpenShift

To get started:

git clone https://github.com/ibolmo/github-spy
cd github-spy
npm install

users.js file

Update this file to include all the users you'd like to track.

.env file

The project includes a .env.example file. This file needs to be copied, and updated with the correct values for each environment variable. A .env is used to protect your secret from the public. Learn more in the motdotla/dotenv repository. It's also handy when deploying to OpenShift.

cp .env.example .env
vim .env

Usage

npm run spy

Optional: Publish to OpenShift

Be sure to get a free account at RedHat's OpenShift. Review the OpenShift getting started.

# create sample app on openshift
rhc app create GitHubSpy nodejs-0.10
cd GitHubSpy
git remote show origin # write down the url

# go back to this cloned repo
cd ../github-spy

# update the openshift environment variables
# recommendation: create a .env.prod with new keen.io key
rhc set-env .env.prod -a GitHubSpy

git remote add openshift ssh://...your.url..
git push -f openshift

License

MIT © Olmo Maldonado