Do you ever wonder about the complete history of stars for GitHub repositories? GitHub's REST APIs come with certain limitations, allowing you to retrieve only up to 40,000 stars per repository. For those tracking a repository with more stars, this limitation can be quite frustrating.
Don't be blinded by stars! While they show popularity, they don't guarantee quality.
Underdog libraries with amazing potential often have low counts.
Remember, even high-starred repos can fizzle out - stars can decline, too!
In my quest for code, I've found hidden gems with few stars that were perfect, while some popular choices were bloated or on the way down.
A growing or stable star count, rather than just a total high number, suggests sustainable interest and community engagement.
In Factors contributing to daily stars I explain what are the reasons why some repos can get high number of stars.
gh-stars-history-trim.mov
https://emanuelef.github.io/daily-stars-explorer/#/kubernetes/kubernetes
gh-compare.mov
https://emanuelef.github.io/daily-stars-explorer/#/compare
docker run --restart=always --env-file .env -d -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/emanuelef/daily-stars-explorer:latest- How to get full history of GitHub stars
- Building a Cost-Free, Always-On Personal Project Stack
- Introducing My GitHub Stars History Project: Unlocking the Full Star Story Beyond 40K and Daily Trends
My project offers you the ability to access the full history of stars for a GitHub repository. It not only shows you the stars per day but also provides a cumulative stars graph. This way, you can visualize how a repository's popularity has evolved over time.
Easily save the star history as CSV or JSON files, with a daily and cumulative star count for each day since the repository's creation.
To keep things efficient, I've implemented a caching mechanism. Once you've fetched the history of stars, the data is cached for seven days. During this period, you have the option to refresh the data up to the current day. Please note that the graph will display data up to the last complete UTC day.
For those curious about how two repositories stack up against each other, my project offers a comparison feature. While stars might not be the sole determinant of a project's worth, this comparison can provide valuable insights.
Go to https://github.com/emanuelef/daily-stars-explorer/blob/main/aggregate.md for the explanation of the current ways of aggregating the data and the trends that are calcualted.
The time it takes to retrieve all stars depends on the total number of stars. To overcome the 40,000-star limit, I leveraged the GitHub GraphQL API. Unfortunately, this doesn't allow for parallel requests. The workaround is to fetch the first half of the stars from the beginning and the other half from the end simultaneously, which can be time-consuming for large repositories.
Retrieving the complete star history for Kubernetes typically takes about 3 minutes.
With a single Personal Access Token (PAT), you can query up to 500,000 stars per hour. If this limit has already been reached, you will need to wait until the next hourly refresh. In the future, I intend to implement the option to use your own PAT, similar to other star history tools.
Currently, my project has limited error handling. I plan to improve this aspect, which includes implementing warnings to alert users when the rate limit might hinder the completion of the star retrieval.
I'm aware that the user interface and code quality have room for improvement. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome as I continue to refine these aspects.
Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open an issue or create a pull request.