Cannot get releases for a Repo with the Github API

Question

I am experiencing problems with the Github API when I try to get the releases for a public repo. I've made several request to /repos/:owner/:repo/releases (https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/releases/#list-releases-for-a-repository) and I'm not able to obtain the releases of a repo, except when I request for the releases of one of my repos and I had created the releases via Github API (https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/releases/#create-a-release).

For example, this GET request to the server returns an empty body and a 200 status:

https://api.github.com/repos/jquery/jquery/releases

I make the request with the Authorization header (Authorization: token {MY_TOKEN}), specifying a token mine with gist, repo and user permisions.

Can you tell me if I'm doing something wrong or what is the best approach to retrieve the releases of a repo?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You cannot request non-published releases. So if the request come with an empty response body then there is no published release under that repository i.e. github.com/jquery/jquery don't have one.

In order to get a JSON feed containing a list of a (owner/repo) releases using the Github Release API endpoint "/repos/:owner/:repo/releases" there must be published releases in that repo.

This is how a published release looks like:

And here you can try to request a release on a repo of mine where I already published a release version: https://api.github.com/repos/wisebrains/wise-archetypes/releases

Answer 2

In many cases there are no published releases, but you can still list tags by using GET /repos/:owner/:repo/tags endpoint.

For example:

GET https://api.github.com/repos/twigphp/twig/tags

Note that this call will only return the 30 latest tags.