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crhodes
crhodes

Posted on • Updated on

Which Programming language are GitHub Apps mostly written in?

And I'm not talking about a REAL app that would replace or alternate GitHub's functionality. I'm talking about an app that extends and uses the functionality of GitHub, according to developer.github.com/apps/marketplace

I'm not really familiar with developing an application as an extension of another application, but based on what I have read it can support node.JS as its programming language.

Some of these extensions if you look into the website show supports of other languages but I have no way of knowing or confirming if its the app itself that were written in these languages or they support applications that are written in these languages?

So, what say you, the experts on this area, are GitHub Apps only written in node.js? If not, can they be written in other languages and what are these languages?

Top comments (6)

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Ben Halpern

You can write one of these apps in any language, as long as you can hook into GitHub's APIs.

That being said, there are supporting libraries which can make the process easier in certain environments.

GitHub's API has three official libraries, Ruby, Node and .NET. GitHub is a Ruby shop, and therefore I think their Ruby libraries are the most mature, but I really think you should be able to work in whatever environment you're comfortable with.

Perhaps @mscccc or @bdougieyo could add more advice here.

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Brian Douglas

True, any language is possible. There are few open source projects to assist with the creation of GitHub Apps.

  1. JavaScript - Probot
  2. Ruby - underway

And of course, you can leverage the Octokit libraries as mention by @bendhalpern. We are going to have some updated guides on GitHub soon ;)

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Brian Douglas

We just released a Ruby Quick Start today guide today: developer.github.com/apps/building...

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crhodes • Edited

Okay, well I'd like to write this application in Python. However I can't seem to find any sources that confirms this possible. I'm hoping based on your advice, it's a possibility?

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rhymes • Edited

@crhodes2 : if you look at developer.github.com/v3/libraries/ there's a bunch of Python clients using the Github API, so I guess you only need to figure out which one is the most up to date :-)

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crhodes

Nice! I appreciate all the info. Thank you :)