GitHub to Superset

This page provides you with instructions on how to extract data from GitHub and analyze it in Superset. (If the mechanics of extracting data from GitHub seem too complex or difficult to maintain, check out Stitch, which can do all the heavy lifting for you in just a few clicks.)

What is GitHub?

GitHub is a hosting service for computer code and other resources managed by the Git version control and source code management system. It provides collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management, and wikis for hosted projects.

What is Superset?

Apache Superset is a cloud-native data exploration and visualization platform that businesses can use to create business intelligence reports and dashboards. It includes a state-of-the-art SQL IDE, and it's open source software, free of cost. The platform was originally developed at Airbnb and donated to the Apache Software Foundation.

Getting data out of GitHub

GitHub has a REST API that you can use to get information about projects, repositories, pull requests, and just about every other kind of data GitHub stores. For example, to get information about an issue, you would issue the call GET /repos/:owner/:repo/issues/:number.

Sample GitHub data

Here's an example of the kind of response you might see with a query like the one above.

{
  "id": 1,
  "node_id": "MDU6SXNzdWUx",
  "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/issues/1347",
  "repository_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World",
  "labels_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/issues/1347/labels{/name}",
  "comments_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/issues/1347/comments",
  "events_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/issues/1347/events",
  "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/issues/1347",
  "number": 1347,
  "state": "open",
  "title": "Found a bug",
  "body": "I'm having a problem with this.",
  "user": {
    "login": "octocat",
    "id": 1,
    "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
    "avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
    "gravatar_id": "",
    "url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat",
    "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
    "followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/followers",
    "following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
    "gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
    "starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
    "subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/subscriptions",
    "organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/orgs",
    "repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/repos",
    "events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
    "received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/received_events",
    "type": "User",
    "site_admin": false
  },
  "labels": [
    {
      "id": 208045946,
      "node_id": "MDU6TGFiZWwyMDgwNDU5NDY=",
      "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/labels/bug",
      "name": "bug",
      "description": "Something isn't working",
      "color": "f29513",
      "default": true
    }
  ],
  "assignee": {
    "login": "octocat",
    "id": 1,
    "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
    "avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
    "gravatar_id": "",
    "url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat",
    "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
    "followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/followers",
    "following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
    "gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
    "starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
    "subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/subscriptions",
    "organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/orgs",
    "repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/repos",
    "events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
    "received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/received_events",
    "type": "User",
    "site_admin": false
  },
  "assignees": [
    {
      "login": "octocat",
      "id": 1,
      "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
      "avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
      "gravatar_id": "",
      "url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat",
      "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
      "followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/followers",
      "following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
      "gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
      "starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
      "subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/subscriptions",
      "organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/orgs",
      "repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/repos",
      "events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
      "received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/received_events",
      "type": "User",
      "site_admin": false
    }
  ],
  "milestone": {
    "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/milestones/1",
    "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/milestones/v1.0",
    "labels_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/milestones/1/labels",
    "id": 1002604,
    "node_id": "MDk6TWlsZXN0b25lMTAwMjYwNA==",
    "number": 1,
    "state": "open",
    "title": "v1.0",
    "description": "Tracking milestone for version 1.0",
    "creator": {
      "login": "octocat",
      "id": 1,
      "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
      "avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
      "gravatar_id": "",
      "url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat",
      "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
      "followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/followers",
      "following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
      "gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
      "starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
      "subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/subscriptions",
      "organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/orgs",
      "repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/repos",
      "events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
      "received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/received_events",
      "type": "User",
      "site_admin": false
    },
    "open_issues": 4,
    "closed_issues": 8,
    "created_at": "2015-04-10T20:09:31Z",
    "updated_at": "2018-03-03T18:58:10Z",
    "closed_at": "2017-02-12T13:22:01Z",
    "due_on": "2016-10-09T23:39:01Z"
  },
  "locked": true,
  "active_lock_reason": "too heated",
  "comments": 0,
  "pull_request": {
    "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/pulls/1347",
    "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/pull/1347",
    "diff_url": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/pull/1347.diff",
    "patch_url": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/pull/1347.patch"
  },
  "closed_at": null,
  "created_at": "2015-04-22T13:33:48Z",
  "updated_at": "2015-04-22T13:33:48Z",
  "closed_by": {
    "login": "octocat",
    "id": 1,
    "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
    "avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
    "gravatar_id": "",
    "url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat",
    "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
    "followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/followers",
    "following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
    "gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
    "starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
    "subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/subscriptions",
    "organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/orgs",
    "repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/repos",
    "events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
    "received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/received_events",
    "type": "User",
    "site_admin": false
  }
}

Whew!

Loading data into Superset

You must replicate data from your SaaS applications to a data warehouse before you can report on it using Superset. Superset can connect to almost 30 databases and data warehouses. Once you choose a data source you want to connect to, you must specify a host name and port, database name, and username and password to get access to the data. You then specify the database schema or tables you want to work with.

Keeping GitHub data up to date

Now what? You've built a script that pulls data from the GitHub API and loads it into your data warehouse, but what happens tomorrow when you have new data?

The key is to build your script in such a way that it can identify incremental updates to your data. Thankfully, many of GitHub's API results include fields like created_at that allow you to identify records that are new since your last update (or since the newest record you've copied). Once you've take new data into account, you can set your script up as a cron job or continuous loop to keep pulling down new data as it appears.

From GitHub to your data warehouse: An easier solution

As mentioned earlier, the best practice for analyzing GitHub data in Superset is to store that data inside a data warehousing platform alongside data from your other databases and third-party sources. You can find instructions for doing these extractions for leading warehouses on our sister sites GitHub to Redshift, GitHub to BigQuery, GitHub to Azure Synapse Analytics, GitHub to PostgreSQL, GitHub to Panoply, and GitHub to Snowflake.

Easier yet, however, is using a solution that does all that work for you. Products like Stitch were built to move data automatically, making it easy to integrate GitHub with Superset. With just a few clicks, Stitch starts extracting your GitHub data, structuring it in a way that's optimized for analysis, and inserting that data into a data warehouse that can be easily accessed and analyzed by Superset.