In the previous tip we looked at the GitHub web service API for organizations. Now let’s check out how you can work with individual GitHub accounts.
Doug Finke has created a wonderful open-source PowerShell module called “ImportExcel” that makes working with Excel files a snap: https://github.com/dfinke/ImportExcel. His public GitHub user name is dfinke.
To find out the latest version of his works and where to download it, try this:
$username = 'dfinke' $reponame = 'ImportExcel' $url = "https://api.github.com/repos/$username/$reponame/releases/latest" Invoke-RestMethod -UseBasicParsing -Uri $url | Select-Object -Property tag_name, published_at, zipball_url, name
The result looks similar to this:
tag_name published_at zipball_url -------- ------------ ----------- v7.1.0 2020-03-21T00:38:13Z https://api.github.com/repos/dfinke/ImportExcel/zipball/v7.1.0
Note that the download URL will download the software project as it is seen on GitHub. If you just want to use his PowerShell module, choose the ready-to-use PowerShell module published to the PowerShell Gallery:
PS> Install-Module -Name ImportExcel -Scope CurrentUser
When the module has been installed, thanks to Doug’s awesome work you can now pipe any data to Export-Excel. If you like, create an Excel sheet with the entire version history of Doug’s module:
$username = 'dfinke' $reponame = 'ImportExcel' $url = https://api.github.com/repos/$username/$reponame/releases Invoke-RestMethod -UseBasicParsing -Uri $url | # workaround needed for any JSON web service result that # consists of more than one dataset ForEach-Object { $_ } | Sort-Object -Property published_at -Descending | Select-Object -Property published_at, Name, Url, body | Export-Excel
