How do we know a pull request is approved or rejected using API in github?

Question

I would like to know if there is an function in the Github API which would return the status of a pull request whether its accepted or rejected. Does such a function exist?

Answer 1

I was stymied by this problem, too. I had a hard time finding relevant info in the docs.

Option A

The tactic I've landed on is to use the issues search endpoint with the review qualifier in the q param.

So, in my case, when I want to see all PRs assigned to me that have not yet been reviewed, I'd hit this endpoint: https://github.com/api/v3/search/issues?q=is:open+is:pr+review-requested:jordan-bonitatis+review:none

Other review qualifiers include approved and changes_requested as explained here: https://docs.github.com/en/github/searching-for-information-on-github/searching-issues-and-pull-requests#search-by-pull-request-review-status-and-reviewer

Option B

If you want to see the review status for a given PR, instead of getting a list filtered by status like in my example above, you can hit the pull requests reviews endpoint: /repos/:owner/:repo/pulls/:number/reviews

This will return a list of reviews for the PR, each of which have a state key.

Note that a given PR may have multiple reviews with conflicting states. Like, if teamMemberA approved it but teamMemberB requested changes. You'll have to traverse the entire list and decide how you want to treat it based on all the states.

Answer 2

You can get a single PR and check it's state and merged properties. If it's merged, then it's accepted. If it's closed and not merged it may be rejected.

In fact it may be not rejected but closed by a creator. I'm not sure if it's possible to check if it was closed by another user (rejected) or by it's creator (denied).

Answer 3

I had a similar requirement - to know if a PR has been approved or not before merging it to master. I added a rule on the repo to ensure that every PR must be approved prior to merging. Then on using the API to get details about the branch there was one field which stated if the branch was clean to merge or blocked . I used this as a way to mange things in my app.

 mergeable_state