The basehead param is comprised of two parts: base and head. Both must be branch names in repo. To compare branches across other repositories in the same network as repo, use the format <USERNAME>:branch.

The response from the API is equivalent to running the git log base..head command; however, commits are returned in chronological order. Pass the appropriate media type to fetch diff and patch formats.

The response also includes details on the files that were changed between the two commits. This includes the status of the change (for example, if a file was added, removed, modified, or renamed), and details of the change itself. For example, files with a renamed status have a previous_filename field showing the previous filename of the file, and files with a modified status have a patch field showing the changes made to the file.

Working with large comparisons

The response will include a comparison of up to 250 commits. If you are working with a larger commit range, you can use the List commits to enumerate all commits in the range.

For comparisons with extremely large diffs, you may receive an error response indicating that the diff took too long
to generate. You can typically resolve this error by using a smaller commit range.

Signature verification object

The response will include a verification object that describes the result of verifying the commit’s signature. The following fields are included in the verification object:

These are the possible values for reason in the verification object:

Gets the contents of a file or directory in a repository. Specify the file path or directory in :path. If you omit
:path, you will receive the contents of the repository’s root directory. See the description below regarding what the API response includes for directories.

Files and symlinks support a custom media type for
retrieving the raw content or rendered HTML (when supported). All content types support a custom media
type to ensure the content is returned in a consistent
object format.

Note:

• To get a repository’s contents recursively, you can recursively get the tree.
• This API has an upper limit of 1,000 files for a directory. If you need to retrieve more files, use the Git Trees
  API.
• This API supports files up to 1 megabyte in size.

If the content is a directory

The response will be an array of objects, one object for each item in the directory.
When listing the contents of a directory, submodules have their “type” specified as “file”. Logically, the value
should be “submodule”. This behavior exists in API v3 for backwards compatibility purposes.
In the next major version of the API, the type will be returned as “submodule”.

If the content is a symlink

If the requested :path points to a symlink, and the symlink’s target is a normal file in the repository, then the
API responds with the content of the file (in the format shown in the example. Otherwise, the API responds with an object
describing the symlink itself.

If the content is a submodule

The submodule_git_url identifies the location of the submodule repository, and the sha identifies a specific
commit within the submodule repository. Git uses the given URL when cloning the submodule repository, and checks out
the submodule at that specific commit.

If the submodule repository is not hosted on github.com, the Git URLs (git_url and _links["git"]) and the
github.com URLs (html_url and _links["html"]) will have null values.

Creates a new file or replaces an existing file in a repository.

Deletes a file in a repository.

You can provide an additional committer parameter, which is an object containing information about the committer. Or, you can provide an author parameter, which is an object containing information about the author.

The author section is optional and is filled in with the committer information if omitted. If the committer information is omitted, the authenticated user’s information is used.

You must provide values for both name and email, whether you choose to use author or committer. Otherwise, you’ll receive a 422 status code.

Lists contributors to the specified repository and sorts them by the number of commits per contributor in descending order. This endpoint may return information that is a few hours old because the GitHub REST API v3 caches contributor data to improve performance.

GitHub identifies contributors by author email address. This endpoint groups contribution counts by GitHub user, which includes all associated email addresses. To improve performance, only the first 500 author email addresses in the repository link to GitHub users. The rest will appear as anonymous contributors without associated GitHub user information.