Listening for Git Repo Changes

Question

I want to write an app that given a user's GitHub account information and a repo will be notified whenever the repo is pushed to. I know I could basically save the state of the repo and poll it for changes periodically but I was wondering if there is a way to do this with a push architecture and if so how to go about it. Thanks for any help!

EDIT - I know I can probably doing this like Heroku does it by having them push to a remote server, but the ideal functionality is to know when they push to Github itself.

Answer 1

If you want to perform an action when a push is received, you can write a script and use it as a post-receive hook. GitHub supports git-hooks, but for obvious reasons they do not allow you to write a "custom script". What their script do is actually simple - they notify you by POSTing a JSON to an URL you specify. See their documentation.

Answer 2

One way which:

• wouldn't involve the main contributor of a repo to enter anything
• would allow you to define what you want to monitor

is to use:

• 2011 (since discontinued) Yahoo Pipe services (and then write an app getting the result of said pipes), like the Friend Stalker pipes described by nefariousdesign.
• 2020 alternatives like GitHub Actions, and, for instance:
  • racket/email-notifications
  • other notifications and messages actions