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I'm trying to search for some piece of code using the GitHub API V3 given only the keyword, not limiting by user, organization, or repository.

For example, if I want to search for all pieces of code that contain the keyword "addClass", the results would be https://github.com/search?q=addClass&type=Code&ref=searchresults without using GitHub API.

But how can I do the same thing through GitHub API? I tried https://api.github.com/search/code?q=addClass It says "Must include at least one user, organization, or repository". How can I fix this?

Answers

2020: As detailed in Mark Z.'s answer, using an authentication (Authorization': 'Token xxxx') allows for a code search.

get /search/code

You can use:

• either a dedicated command-line tool like feinoujc/gh-search-cli

  ghs code --extension js "import _ from 'lodash'"
  

• or the official GitHub CLI gh, (after a gh auth login) as show in issue 5117:

  gh api --method=GET "search/code?q=filename:test+extension:yaml+org:new-org"
  

  Or even:

  gh api --method=GET search/code -f q='filename:test extension:yaml org:new-org' \
         --jq '.items[] | [.repository.full_name,.path,.sha] | @tsv'
  

  That would get a line-based, tab-separated list of fields in this order: repo name, file path, git sha. (see gh help formatting)

2014 (original answer): That seems related to the new restriction "New Validation Rule for Beta Code Search API" (Oct. 2013)

In order to support the expected volume of requests, we’re applying a new validation rule to the Code Search API. Starting today, you will need to scope your code queries to a specific set of users, organizations, or repositories.

So, the example of the API search code mentions now:

Suppose you want to find the definition of the addClass function inside jQuery. Your query would look something like this:

https://api.github.com/search/code?q=addClass+in:file+language:js+repo:jquery/jquery