Use GraphQL to scrape GitHub for packages rather than maintaining an index about packagelist HOT 5 CLOSED

Partly as a quality thing, the fact that people can just add a Package.swift file to any repository seemed like a headache I could avoid. There's also the possibility that people will host elsewhere than GitHub, but honestly I think that's more of a theoretical advantage... 😂

But, I also didn't realise that GitHub could be queried like that with GraphQL. It's interesting. In theory the algorithm should make all the terrible packages that the query may find fade away. I'll have a play with it.

My big hope longer term is that the GitHub Package Registry will have an API, and that people will add their packages there, and I can use that as a definitive source for packages. 🤞

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I would assume that the Registry API is just the GH API.
You should contact @kiliankoe about that, but i think the GH API has severe limitations on how often and how much you can query, don’t remember the details.
(btw: the above is just extracted from Kilians swift catalog ...)

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Hi 👋

I used the following GraphQL query in apodidae to query for Swift packages on GitHub.

query ($query: String!) {
  search(query: $query, type: REPOSITORY, first: 100) {
  repositoryCount
  repositories: edges {
    node {
      ... on Repository {
        nameWithOwner
        description
        url
        isFork
        parent {
          nameWithOwner
        }
        isPrivate
        pushedAt
        license
        openIssues: issues(first: 0, states: OPEN) {
          totalCount
        }
        stargazers(first: 0) {
          totalCount
        }
        packageManifest: object(expression: "master:Package.swift") {
          ... on Blob {
            text
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

It definitely has a big drawback though. GitHub's GraphQL schema doesn't allow me to specify any filters based on the existence of file types, so the best I can do is query for the existence of a package manifest and filter client-side. This obviously only works (I believe the limit on results was 100 repos) when also specifying Swift as the main repository language in the search query (not shown here), but that assumption doesn't hold up for all SwiftPM packages. Packages in other languages or with lots of bundled documentation will be missing entirely :/

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I would assume that the Registry API is just the GH API.

I think that's possible, but as the GPR is quite a big push for GitHub and that it's so ripe for needing tools built around and on top of it, I'm hoping it gets specific API methods for itself.

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👋 @kiliankoe!

It definitely has a big drawback though. GitHub's GraphQL schema doesn't allow me to specify any filters based on the existence of file types, so the best I can do is query for the existence of a package manifest and filter client-side. This obviously only works (I believe the limit on results was 100 repos) when also specifying Swift as the main repository language in the search query (not shown here), but that assumption doesn't hold up for all SwiftPM packages. Packages in other languages or with lots of bundled documentation will be missing entirely :/

This is such great information, thank you.

I think what I'd like to do is continue with the current JSON approach for now, at least until the Xcode 11 release in September and see what Apple/GitHub put out alongside that.

I have a hundred things I'd like to do with the actual metadata that will continue to make the search results better, and the JSON approach will work for now. I'm going to put this on ice for a bit until it's clearer what the GPR will be.

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