How to Query GitHub for User Contributions in a Specific Timeframe

I needed needed to find all public GitHub repositories a user has contributed to within a specific timeframe, and wanted to share - and record for myself - the API query I learned.

This can be a useful for generating reports, tracking progress, analyzing activity over a certain period, and more.

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Use the GitHub GraphQL API

We leverage the GitHub GraphQL API to get the list of public repositories a user contributed to within a specific timeframe, using the contributionsCollection field to specify a time range and retrieve contributions made by a user during that period.

Here’s the query (replace metachris with the desired username and adjust the from and to dates as needed):

gh api graphql -f query='
{
  user(login: "metachris") {
    contributionsCollection(from: "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z", to: "2024-12-31T23:59:59Z") {
      commitContributionsByRepository {
        repository {
          nameWithOwner
        }
        contributions {
          totalCount
        }
      }
    }
  }
}' --jq '.data.user.contributionsCollection.commitContributionsByRepository[].repository.nameWithOwner'

The output is a plain list of repository names.

Include Commit Counts and Format Output

Even better, we can include the number of commits per repository, and format the output to be more readable. This just needs a slight modification to the --jq part of the command, which is delightfully flexible:

gh api graphql -f query='
{
  user(login: "metachris") {
    contributionsCollection(from: "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z", to: "2024-12-31T23:59:59Z") {
      commitContributionsByRepository {
        repository {
          nameWithOwner
        }
        contributions {
          totalCount
        }
      }
    }
  }
}' --jq '.data.user.contributionsCollection.commitContributionsByRepository[] | "\(.repository.nameWithOwner | .[0:50] + (" " * (50 - (. | length)))) \(.contributions.totalCount) commits"'

This is the output:

BuilderNet/website                                 84 commits
flashbots/system-api                               57 commits
flashbots/relayscan                                42 commits
flashbots/builder-hub                              37 commits
metachris/website                                  23 commits
flashbots/mev-boost                                20 commits
flashbots/suave-docs                               19 commits
flashbots/rbuilder                                 17 commits
flashbots/op-rbuilder                              15 commits
flashbots/cvm-reverse-proxy                        13 commits
flashbots/go-bob-firewall                          12 commits
flashbots/go-template                              12 commits
flashbots/mempool-dumpster                         10 commits
flashbots/go-utils                                 8 commits
flashbots/rbuilder-relay-measurement               6 commits
flashbots/mev-boost-relay                          6 commits
flashbots/suave-geth                               4 commits
flashbots/buildernet-orderflow-proxy               3 commits
flashbots/suave-specs                              3 commits
flashbots/prio-load-balancer                       2 commits
flashbots/flashbots-docs                           1 commits
flashbots/flashbots-writings-website               1 commits
ethereum/builder-specs                             1 commits
flashbots/rpc-endpoint                             1 commits
metachris/flashbotsrpc                             1 commits

🎉

Hope this is useful to you as it was to me! If you have any questions, suggestions or feedback, feel free to reach out or leave a comment below.

Chris