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HomeDevelopment ToolsgitCompletely understand how to correctly retrieve resources on GitHub!

Completely understand how to correctly retrieve resources on GitHub!

When I was a beginner open source contributor, one of my biggest challenges was finding the right projects/problems to work on.

For a long time I relied on resources from various writers on the internet (which are great, by the way). But I’ve always wanted to find a solution to this problem—a way that I could search for and track projects that fit my skill set.

Let’s agree on one thing: unlike Google, searching GitHub isn’t easy. But as a developer, there's a good chance you interact with GitHub or Gitlab every day.

The question now is not what you use these version control systems for, but how you use them. Just like mastering Google search skills is essential for any average internet user, I believe it is essential for developers to learn how to search GitHub effectively.

In this article, we’ll cover different techniques on how to properly search GitHub. You will learn how to search for:

  • Issues and Pull Requests
  • Repositories
  • Users
  • Topics

and more. let's start.

GitHub Search Queries

To find detailed information about something online, you need to have the right search skills. The same goes for GitHub — to find detailed information, you can easily find specific Issues and Pull Requests for a given project using common filtering, sorting, and search techniques.

Although you list multiple resources for different projects on the Internet, the main problem comes when you want to search for them yourself. How to get started? Which keywords should you use to find the right results?

Most maintainers tend to label their projects as issues, which makes it easier for contributors to find suitable projects. Listed below are some tips that may help you when using GitHub.

How to search for issues and submit pull requests on GitHub

One of the most common ways to find projects to contribute to is by searching for issues and related PRs. Here are some tips you can use to easily find reliable answers:

How to search a repository

By default, to search, you just enter the repository name in the search bar! You will get some search results.

But the chances of you getting the exact buyback you want are very low.

Let’s look at some ways you can narrow down your search:

How to find by name, description/README

Things to note when searching by name and description of a readme file The point is that the search phrase should start with the in qualifier. This makes it possible to search "inside" what you're looking for.

Example

  • Use in:name. Let's say you're looking for resources to learn more about data science. In this case, you can use the Data Science in:name command, which will list the repositories that have Data Science in the repository name.

  • Use in:description. If you want to find repositories with a specific description, for example, the repository's description contains the word "freeCodeCamp", our search would be: freecodecamp in:description

  • Use in:readme. You use it to search a file's README for a certain phrase. If we wanted to find repositories with the word freecodecamp in their README, our search would be: freecodecamp in:readme.

  • Use in:topic. You use it to find whether a certain phrase or word is tagged in a topic. For example, to find all repositories that have freecodecamp listed in the topic, our search would be: freecodecamp in:topic

You can also combine multiple search queries to further narrow your search.

How to search based on Stars, Forks

You can also search repositories based on how many Stars and Forks a project has. This makes it easier for you to know how popular the item is.

Example

  • Use stars:n. If you were searching for a repository with 1000 stars, your search query would be stars:1000. This will list repositories with 1000 stars.

  • Use forks:n. This specifies the number of forks the repository should have. If you wanted to find repositories with fewer than 100 forks, your search would be: forks:.

Fortunately you can always use relational operators, such as , <code>>, , <code>>= and .. help you further narrow your search.

How to Find by Language

Another cool way to search on GitHub is to search by language. This can help you filter out repositories for a specific language.

Example:

  • Use language:LANGUAGE. For example, if you wanted to find repositories written in PHP, your search would be: language:PHP

How to find by organization name

You can also Search repositories/projects maintained or created by a specific organization. To do this, you need to start your search with the keyword org:..., followed by the organization name.

For example, if you search for org:freecodecamp, it will list repositories that match freeCodeCamp.

How to Find by Date

If you want your results to be based on a specific date, you can search using one of these keywords: created, updated, merged and closed. These keywords should be used along with a date in the format YYYY-MM-DD.

Example:

  • Use keyword:YYYY-MM-DD. For example, we want to search all repositories with the word freeCodeCamp created after 2022-10-01. Then our search will be: freecodecamp created:>2022-10-01

You can also use , <code>> , <code>>= and to search for dates after, before and after a specified date. To search within a range you can use <code>....

How to find by license

#When you are looking for a When contributing to a project, the license is very important. Different licenses give different rights to what contributors can or cannot do.

To make it easier for you to find projects with the correct license, you need to have a good understanding of the license. You can read more about them here.

Example:

  • Use license:LICENSE_KEYWORD. This is a great way to search for projects with a specific license. For example, to search for projects with an MIT license, you would use license:MIT.

How to find by visibility

# You can also search based on a repository's visibility. In this case, you can use public or private. This will match issues and PRs in public or private repositories respectively.

Example:

  • Use is:public. This will display a list of public repositories. Let's take an example where we want to search all public repositories owned by freeCodCamp. Then our search will be: is:public org:freecodecamp.
  • Use is:private. This query aims to list all private repositories under a given search query.

Conclusion

Although we have covered many search queries here, you can still further narrow your search by combining multiple parameters together.

For more resources and more search parameters, you can check out the GitHub documentation or use Advanced GitHub Search. These methods always come in handy as they provide more filtering options.

You can use a variety of search parameters to simplify your daily activities on GitHub. Hopefully this will help you use this platform more easily and effectively.

Original address: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/github...

Translation address: https:// learnku.com/laravel/t/73213

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