Python需要两次请求GitHub / API / repo / statistics / contributors url以获得内容

Question

I want to get particular repository's contributors and their total number of commits. I'm using Python 2.7 and Requests 2.7.0 library to request GitHub API url like: ' https://api.github.com/repos/marcboeker/mongodb-utils/stats/contributors ' (This is a random link, sorry marcboeker ^_^).

However, the first time I request particular url, I got an empty dictionary response. The second time I request the same url, I can get a list that contains information I need. Here is my code:

import requests

contributors_url = 'https://api.github.com/repos/marcboeker/mongodb-utils/stats/contributors'
contributors = requests.get(contributors_url).json()
print contributors

I also tried to use GitHub authentication and tried to use urllib2 library. I also tried in Python 3.4. But I got the same result. I need to get right result the first time I request the url, not second or third time. Since other GitHub API urls works fine, please explain why it's happening to 'contributors'.

Answer 1

I believe this is due to the computation that needs to occur for generating the statistics. The API documentation outlines this:

If the data hasn't been cached when you query a repository's statistics, you'll receive a 202 response; a background job is also fired to start compiling these statistics. Give the job a few moments to complete, and then submit the request again. If the job has completed, that request will receive a 200 response with the statistics in the response body.

Can you check the status code in the request to verify that it's an empty response:

contributors_url = 'https://api.github.com/repos/marcboeker/mongodb-utils/stats/contributors' request = requests.get(contributors_url) print request.status_code

I tested this with Fiddler on a fresh repository and received both the 202 status code and an empty JSON array as the response. So I think you need to check that status code and then retry the call after a delay...