Retrieve HTML of ReadMe

Question

Hi so first time working with APIs like this. Anyways, I've been reading up on the GitHub API and came across this:

READMEs support custom media types for retrieving the raw content or rendered HTML.

src: https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/contents/#get-the-readme

Which I believe means that it is possible to retrieve an HTML formatted version of the contents of the README? If so how would I retrieve it using AJAX since the tutorials are all for curl. In the end I want to display a portion of it on my website and would be a lot easier if given in the html format rather then markdown.

The docs say something about: application/vnd.github.VERSION.html

I just don't necessarily know how to use it.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You have to set the Accept header of the HTTP request to application/vnd.github.html.

$.ajax({
  url: 'https://api.github.com/repos/just95/toml.dart/readme',
  headers: { 'Accept': 'application/vnd.github.html' }
}).done(function(data) {
  alert(data);
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Answer 2

All you need to do is set the Accept header of your HTTPS request. Using cURL for example:

curl -i -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3.html" https://api.github.com/repos/github/developer.github.com/readme

In JavaScript,

var apiRoot = 'https://api.github.com';
var myUser = YOUR_USER_HERE;
var myRepo = YOUR_REPO_HERE;
var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open('GET', apiRoot + '/repos/' + myUser + '/' + myRepo + '/readme');
request.setRequestHeader('Accept','application/vnd.github.v3.html');
/* add event listeners... */
request.onreadystatechange = function() {
  if (request.readyState === 4 && request.status === 200) {
    document.body.innerHTML = request.response;
  }
};
request.send();