How to get Trending GitHub Repositories Using Node.js ?

Last Updated : 13 Aug, 2020

Approach:

Fetch the entire HTML page and store it as string using request package.
Load HTML into cheerio and find the CSS selectors to extract repositories details.

Using request package: request package: The request is designed to be the simplest way possible to make http calls. It supports HTTPS and follows redirects by default. Installing request package:

$ npm install request

Note: Run this command in current folder, where ‘app.js’ file located. Syntax for request:

request(url, (error, response, body) => {
    if(!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
        statements to be executed.
    }
}

Parameters:

url: API endpoint to which request is made.
response: HTTP response status codes indicate whether a specific HTTP request has been successfully completed.
body: Response data.

Using cheerio package: cheerio package: Fast, flexible & lean implementation of core jQuery designed specifically for the server. Installing cheerio package:

$ npm install cheerio

Note: Run this command in current folder, where ‘app.js’ file located. Syntax for cheerio:

const cheerio = require('cheerio')
const $ = cheerio.load(HTMLString)
 
$(CSS Selector).text('Hello there!')
$.html()

javascript

// Import request package
const request = require('request');

// Import cheerio package
const cheerio = require('cheerio');

// Github Trending Page URL
const url = 'https://github.com/trending';

// Get request to the URL
request.get(url, (error, response, body) => {

    // If the response code is 200 and
    // there is no error
    if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {

        // Load HTML string into cheerio
        const $ = cheerio.load(body);

        // Below are the CSS selectors to 
        // fetch the data required
        let temp = $('.Box-row')
        let repos = $('.h3.lh-condensed a');
        let data = [];
        for (let i = 0; i < repos.length; i++) {
            let reponame = $(temp[i])
                .find('.h3.lh-condensed a')
                .text().replace(
                /[\n\r]+|[\s]{2, }/g, ' ').trim();

            let repolanguage = $(temp[i])
                .find(
'.f6.text-gray.mt-2 span span[itemprop="programmingLanguage"]')
                .text()
                .replace(/[\n\r]+|[\s]{2, }/g, ' ').trim();

            let repostars = $(temp[i])
                .find(
'.f6.text-gray.mt-2 .muted-link.d-inline-block.mr-3')
                .text()
                .replace(/[\n\r]+|[\s]{2, }/g, ' ').trim();

            // Push the fetched data into an object
            data.push({
                'Repository': reponame,
                'Language': repolanguage,
                'Stars/Forks': repostars
            })
        }

        // Display the Object created using console.table
        console.table(data)
    }
    else {
        console.log("Unable to fetch data from github");
    }
});