How do you paginate the results of GitHub's compare commit API

Question

I am not able to paginate the results of the Github compare commit REST API as defined here: https://docs.github.com/en/github-ae@latest/rest/commits/commits#compare-two-commits

I perform a GET operation in the following format: url = https://api.github.com/repos/${owner}/${repo}/compare/${base}...${head}?per_page=50

I always get 300 files with no link as to how I can get to the next page (list of 50 items).

Note: I have read the git hub pagination https://docs.github.com/en/rest/guides/traversing-with-pagination, and it has not provided much insight.

Ideally, I am looking for a JS implementation of how-to page the results of the compare API

Answer 1

What I observed when working with the API is that when you paginate it does not paginate files, rather it paginates commits. I think this makes some sense, I'm not sure what you would do if it paginated files as well.

I wrote a basic script using Octokit.js to traverse the commits which I'll adjust here to collect files for you. It's just some rough code but hopefully gives you an idea.

import { Octokit } from '@octokit/rest';

const octokit = new Octokit( { auth: 'my personal access token' });

const owner = 'put repo owner here';
const repo = 'put repo name here';
const base = 'put base ref here';
const head = 'put head ref here';

const {data: { total_commits, files }} = await octokit.repos.compareCommitsWithBasehead( {
        owner,
        repo,
        basehead: `${base}...${head}`,
        per_page: 50,
} );

// total commits / page size rounded up.
const pages = Math.ceil( total_commits / 50 );

let allFiles = [];

// add page 1 files
allFiles = allFiles.concat( files );

for ( let i = 2; i <= pages; i++ ) {
    const {
        data: { files: pagedFiles },
    } = await octokit.repos.compareCommitsWithBasehead( {
        owner,
        repo,
        basehead: `${base}...${head}`,
        per_page: 100,
        page: i,
    } );

    allFiles = allFiles.concat( pagedFiles );
}

console.log( pagedFiles.length );
console.log( pagedFiles );