counted

The missing analytics feature for GitHub Releases.

Why?

The GitHub Releases API provides only a point-in-time snapshot of the download_count property for each asset.

What?

This repository contains a script to fetch the download_count value for all release assets in a given repository and store that data in a number of per-release JSON files in that same repository.

By default it will store these files in its own counted directory on a counted branch.

$ cd myrepo
$ git pull
$ git checkout counted
$ ls -1 counted
release-1234567.json
release-1234568.json
release-1234569.json
...
$ cat release-1234567.json
{
  "7654321": {
    "2018-01-01T00:00:24Z": 7,
    "2018-01-02T00:00:41Z": 12,
    "2018-01-03T00:00:44Z": 23,
...

In this example 1234567 is the release id and 7654321 is the asset id.

This script can be run at any desired frequency, typically daily. The more often it is run, the more accurate data interpolation can be.

How?

First you'll need to create a counted branch on your repository.

Then Heroku Scheduler can be used to run this script for free.

1. Click the Deploy to Heroku button above.
2. Enter a unique-to-Heroku App name.
3. Choose a region, one of US or Europe.
4. Fill in the Config Variables with the values for your GitHub repository.
   • GITHUB_OWNER: GitHub username that owns the repository, e.g. lovell.
   • GITHUB_REPO: Name of the repository, e.g. counted.
   • GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN: GitHub Personal Access Token granted public_repo scope access.
   • REPO_BRANCH: Git branch to use for commits, default value is counted.
   • REPO_DIRECTORY: Directory to use to store data, default value is counted.
   • COMMITTER_NAME: Git user.name for this task to commit as, default value is counted.
   • COMMITTER_EMAIL: Git user.email for this task to commit as, default value is [e-mail].
5. Click Deploy app and wait for the Your app was successfully deployed message.
6. Click Manage App.
7. Click Heroku Scheduler under Add-ons.
8. Click Add new job and enter the following details:
   • $: npm start
   • Frequency: Daily
   • Next due: 00:00
9. Click Save.

TODO

• Interpolation of timestamped download_count values
• Pretty reports

Licence

Copyright 2018 Lovell Fuller.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.