Merge Requests Data Extraction from Gitlab API: A Step-by-Step Guide

Are you tired of manually extracting data from Gitlab’s merge requests? Do you want to automate the process and get insights into your development workflow? Look no further! In this article, we’ll show you how to extract merge requests data from Gitlab API using a programming language of your choice. Buckle up and let’s dive in!

What is Gitlab API?

Gitlab API is a powerful tool that allows you to interact with Gitlab programmatically. It provides a wide range of endpoints to access and manipulate data, including merge requests. With Gitlab API, you can automate tasks, build custom integrations, and extract valuable insights from your development workflow.

Why Extract Merge Requests Data?

Merge requests are a crucial part of the development process. They provide a clear picture of changes made to the codebase, allowing developers to review, discuss, and approve changes before they’re merged into the main branch. By extracting merge requests data, you can:

• Track changes made to the codebase over time
• Analyze the development workflow and identify bottlenecks
• Measure the performance of individual developers or teams
• Generate reports and visualizations to communicate with stakeholders

Prerequisites

Before we dive into the tutorial, make sure you have the following:

• A Gitlab account with API access
• A programming language of your choice (we’ll use Python in this example)
• A Gitlab API token with read access to merge requests
• A basic understanding of API requests and JSON data

Obtaining a Gitlab API Token

To obtain a Gitlab API token, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your Gitlab account
2. Click on your profile picture in the top right corner, then click on Settings
3. Click on Access tokens in the left sidebar
4. Click on New personal access token
5. Select the read_merge_request scope and click Create personal access token

Save the API token in a secure location, as you’ll need it to authenticate your API requests.

Extracting Merge Requests Data

Now that you have your API token, let’s extract merge requests data using Python. We’ll use the requests library to send API requests and the json library to parse JSON data.

import requests
import json

# Set your API token and Gitlab instance URL
api_token = 'your_api_token_here'
gitlab_url = 'https://your_gitlab_instance.com/api/v4'

# Set the API endpoint and parameters
endpoint = '/projects/{project_id}/merge_requests'
params = {'per_page': 100, 'state': 'all'}

# Set the project ID and API headers
project_id = 123
headers = {'Authorization': f'Bearer {api_token}'}

# Send the API request
response = requests.get(f'{gitlab_url}{endpoint}', headers=headers, params=params)

# Parse the JSON response
merge_requests = json.loads(response.content)

In this example, we’re extracting all merge requests for a specific project using the /projects/{project_id}/merge_requests endpoint. You can modify the parameters to filter merge requests by state, labels, or other criteria.

Parsing Merge Requests Data

The API response contains a JSON array of merge requests, each with the following properties:

Property	Description
id	Merge request ID
title	Merge request title
description	Merge request description
state	Merge request state (e.g., opened, closed, merged)
created_at	Timestamp of when the merge request was created
updated_at	Timestamp of when the merge request was last updated

You can access these properties using dot notation, like this:

for merge_request in merge_requests:
    print(merge_request['title'])
    print(merge_request['description'])
    print(merge_request['state'])
    print(merge_request['created_at'])
    print(merge_request['updated_at'])

Handling Pagination

By default, the Gitlab API returns a maximum of 100 results per page. If you have more than 100 merge requests, you’ll need to handle pagination to extract all the data.

Gitlab API provides a X-Total header in the response, which indicates the total number of results. You can use this header to determine the number of pages and extract all the data.

total_pages = int(response.headers['X-Total-Pages'])
page = 1

while page <= total_pages:
    params['page'] = page
    response = requests.get(f'{gitlab_url}{endpoint}', headers=headers, params=params)
    merge_requests.extend(json.loads(response.content))
    page += 1

This code extracts all merge requests by iterating over the pages and appending the results to a list.

Visualizing Merge Requests Data

Now that you have extracted the merge requests data, you can visualize it using your favorite library. For example, you can use Matplotlib to create a bar chart showing the number of merge requests per day:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Create a dictionary to store the count of merge requests per day
merge_requests_per_day = {}

for merge_request in merge_requests:
    created_at = datetime.strptime(merge_request['created_at'], '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ')
    day = created_at.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
    if day in merge_requests_per_day:
        merge_requests_per_day[day] += 1
    else:
        merge_requests_per_day[day] = 1

# Create a bar chart
plt.bar(merge_requests_per_day.keys(), merge_requests_per_day.values())
plt.xlabel('Day')
plt.ylabel('Number of Merge Requests')
plt.title('Merge Requests per Day')
plt.show()

This is just a simple example of what you can do with merge requests data. You can create more complex visualizations, generate reports, or even build custom dashboards to track your development workflow.

Conclusion

In this article, we've shown you how to extract merge requests data from Gitlab API using Python. We've covered the basics of Gitlab API, obtained an API token, extracted merge requests data, parsed the JSON response, handled pagination, and visualized the data.

With this knowledge, you can automate the extraction of merge requests data and gain valuable insights into your development workflow. Remember to customize the code to fit your needs, and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or need further assistance.

Happy coding!

Frequently Asked Questions

Getting curious about extracting merge request data from GitLab API? We've got you covered! Here are some frequently asked questions to help you get started: