I have a list of JSON files in GH to be fetched via API.
For this, I first use the /git.trees
API endpoint to get a list that contains path
and url
info.
Next, there seem to be 2 options for getting the file contents:
use the path
value from the above response in the 'get repository content' API
use the url
value from the above response in the 'get a blob' API
Are there any conditions for which one to select in which scenario?
The contents API is a newer API intended to be used with UI applications that display files differently based on their type, e.g. symlinks vs regular files. It uses file’s path as a key for retrieval.
Blobs API is older and simpler API that is used for simple file contents retrieval - no metadata. It uses files’s SHA as a key for retrieval.
When starting with the trees API, using blobs API for content is easier because trees API provides blobs url to retrieve the the files’s content.