Get a personal access token for the GitHub API from
https://github.com/settings/tokens and select the scopes necessary for
your planned tasks. The repo
scope, for example, is one many are
likely to need. The token itself is a string of 40 letters and digits. You
can store it any way you like and provide explicitly via the .token
argument to gh()
.
However, many prefer to define an environment variable GITHUB_PAT
(or
GITHUB_TOKEN
) with this value in their .Renviron
file. Add a
line that looks like this, substituting your PAT:
GITHUB_PAT=8c70fd8419398999c9ac5bacf3192882193cadf2
Put a line break at the end! If you're using an editor that shows line
numbers, there should be (at least) two lines, where the second one is empty.
Restart R for this to take effect. Call gh_whoami()
to confirm
success.
To get complete information on the authenticated user, call
gh("/user")
.
For token management via API (versus the browser), use the
OAuth Authorizations API.
This API requires Basic Authentication using your username and password,
not tokens, and is outside the scope of the gh package.